For their tax reform plans to work, candidates need concomitant proposals to restrain the growth of federal spending.
read more...Now might be a good time to get back to basics.
read more...I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal last week about the policy debate over whether it’s better to lower tax rates or to provide targeted tax cuts for parents. Since this meant I was wading into a fight between so-called reform conservatives (or “reformicons”) and traditional conservatives (or “supply-siders”), I wasn’t surprised to learn that not everyone […]
read more...Obamacare resulted in big increases in the fiscal burden of government(ironically, it would be even worse if Obama hadn’t unilaterally suspended parts of the law). The legislation increased government spending, mostly for expanded Medicaidand big subsidies for private insurance. There were also several tax hikes, with targeted levies on medical device makers and tanning beds, as well as some soak-the-rich […]
read more...Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a widespread consensus that high tax rates were economically misguided. Many Democrats, for instance, supported the 1986 Tax Reform Act that lowered the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent (albeit offset by increased double taxation and more punitive depreciation rules). And even in the 1990s, many on […]
read more...On several occasions, I’ve observed that the poverty rate in America was steadily falling, but that progress came to a halt in the mid-1960s when the government declared a War on Poverty. And I almost always included a chart showing the annual poverty rate over several decades. Moreover, I posted graphs showing how government programs trap people in dependency because of very high implicit […]
read more...The title of this piece has an asterisk because, unfortunately, we’re not talking about progress on the Laffer Curve in the United States. Even Keynes himself accepted this. Like many other economists throughout the ages, he understood and agreed with the principles that underpinned what eventually came to be known as the Laffer curve: that […]
read more...Obamacare was put together by people who don’t understand economics. This is probably the understatement of the year since I could be referring to many features of the bad law. The higher tax burden on saving and investment, making an anti-growth tax system even worse. The exacerbation of the third-party payer problem, which is the […]
read more...I periodically cite new academic research about tax policy and economic activity. I sometimes even publicize research from international bureaucracies showing the link between taxes and growth. I’m not naive enough to think that any particular study will change minds, but when the bulk of the research unambiguously tells us that lower tax rates are […]
read more...I often argue that we need to preserve tax competition and tax havens in order to limit the greed of the political class. Without some sort of external constraint, they will over-tax and over-spend, creating the kind of downward economic spiral already happening in some European nations. Speaking of which, new evidence from Europe bolsters […]
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