I periodically mock the crazy statists of California. The state is almost surely doomed to suffer a Greek-style fiscal chaos. The only unknown is whether Illinois will beat the Golden State into default. The politicians in Sacramento impose very high taxes to fund a bloated bureaucracy that oversees a bunch of politically correct nonsense. But […]

One of my favorite Cato Institute publications is the Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, which is produced by my colleague Chris Edwards. The report card uses variables such as the burden of government spending and the degree of class warfare tax policy to determine which states are moving in the right direction and […]

In continued news of people responding to tax competition, online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. has announced it is scrapping deals in Arkansas and Connecticut due to new legislation requiring new online retail taxes. As the Wall Street Journal reported: Amazon.com Inc. severed its affiliations with websites in Connecticut and Arkansas because of new state taxes […]

We often look at how tax competition affects nations, but the same concept applies to U.S. states as well. Two recent reports demonstrate what happens when politicians fail to understand just how tax competition works. In a report from the Maine Heritage Policy Center, we see how New Hampshire’s low retail tax rate is attracting […]

The showdown in Wisconsin has generated competing claims about whether state and local government bureaucrats are paid too much or paid too little compared to their private sector counterparts. The data on total compensation clearly show a big advantage for state and local bureaucrats, largely because of lavish benefits (which is the problem that  Governor […]

Here are a few predictions for next year. It will be hot in Dallas in July, it will be cold in Stockholm in February, and Governor Jerry Brown of California will ask Uncle Sam for some sort of bailout. I’m actually not sure about the first two predictions, but I think the last one is […]

The Oregon Ducks will compete for the national championship early next month, so they’ve had a good season. Unfortunately, Oregon’s government isn’t doing nearly so well. Politicians approved a big tax hike on those bad, evil rich people in 2009, and Oregon’s spite-filled voters approved that measure earlier this year. So how’s is Oregon’s class-warfare […]

There are plenty of reason to like and dislike the tax deal between President Obama and congressional leaders. On the plus side, we dodge a big tax increase for the next two years. We also replace a goofy and ineffective “make work pay” tax credit with a supply-side oriented reduction in the payroll tax rate […]

I take second place to nobody in my view that government is horribly incompetent, but even I’m shocked by this story linked on Drudge. According to a news report out of Indiana, students who take the government’s driver’s ed class are four times more likely to crash than those who don’t take the classes. There […]

My default assumption is that all politicians will do the wrong thing when they have to choose between defending freedom and appeasing special interests. Even the ones that spout good rhetoric often do the wrong thing, particularly after a couple of years in office (sort of like being assimilated by the Borg, for you Star […]