Even though I’ve already made clear that I am less-than-overwhelmed by the thought of Mitt Romney in the White House, I worry that people will become to think I’m a GOP toady. That’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time providing favorable analysis and commentary on the relative merits of the Ryan budget (particularly proposed […]

I wrote last year about the way in which welfare programs lead to very high implicit marginal tax rates on low-income people. More specifically, they lose handouts when they earn income. As such, it is not very advantageous for them to climb the economic ladder because hard work is comparatively unrewarding. Thanks to the American […]

Last month, I exposed some major errors that Paul Krugman committed when he criticized Estonia for restraining the burden of government spending. My analysis will be helpful since I am now in Estonia for a speech about economic reform, and I wrote a column that was published yesterday by the nation’s main business newspaper. But […]

There are two serious problems with America’s Social Security system. Almost everyone knows about the first problem, which is that the system is bankrupt, with huge unfunded liabilities of about $30 trillion. The other crisis is that the system gives workers a lousy level of retirement income compared to the amount of taxes they pay […]

Many people think that my opposition to tax increases is ideological, but they’re wrong. If someone told me that I magically had the power to flick a switch and give the country a flat tax, but that simple and fair tax system would only be possible if the rate was set high enough to give […]

I like to think people in the United States still believe in liberty, and I’ve cited some polling data in support of American Exceptionalism. And it seems like that philosophical belief in individualism and limited government sometimes has an impact in the polling booth. According to a recent study, Obamacare was poison for Democrats in […]

Last year, I narrated a CF&P video making the case for Medicaid reform. The proposal is very simple: Replicate the success of the welfare reform of the 1990s by block granting the program and giving states full autonomy to figure out how best to provide health care to low-income people. Medicaid reform is critical to […]

Early last year, CF&P released this video, narrated by yours truly, making the case that the United States and other nations should shift from a tax-and-transfer entitlement scheme to a system of personal retirement accounts. Some left wingers criticized the idea, saying the big drop in the stock market in 2008-2009 is proof that personal […]

Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly. When CBO issued new numbers early last year, I repeated the exercise and […]

As I explained in this set of videos, we desperately need to reform entitlement programs. But not in the wrong way, with price fixing and means testing. Good reform means personal retirement accounts for Social Security. It means vouchers for Medicare. And it means block-granting Medicaid back to the states. And if you want to understand why reform […]