I’ve already condemned the foolish people of California for approving a referendum to raise the state’s top tax rate to 13.3 percent. This impulsive and misguided exercise in class warfare surely will backfire as more and more productive people flee to other states – particularly those that don’t impose any state income tax. We know […]

Good fiscal policy doesn’t require heavy lifting. Governments simply need to limit the burden of government spending. The key variable is making sure spending doesn’t consume ever-larger shares of economic output. In other words, follow Mitchell’s Golden Rule. It’s possible for a nation to have a large public sector and be fiscally stable. Growth won’t […]

Because of Obama’s class-warfare tax hike and additional tax increases by kleptocrats at the state level, many successful taxpayers will now lose more than 50 percent of any additional income they generate for the American economy. I discuss the implications of this punitive tax policy in this CNBC interview. Normally, this is the section where […]

There’s a debate among policy wonks about whether a no-tax-hike policy is an effective way of restraining the burden of government spending. At the risk of over-simplifying, the folks who support the “starve the beast” theory argue that there are political and/or economic limits to government borrowing, so if you don’t let politicians tax more, […]

Just before the end of the year, I shared some fascinating research about people dying quicker or living longer when there are changes in the death tax. Sort of the ultimate Laffer Curve response, particularly if it’s the former. But the more serious point is that the death tax shouldn’t exist at all, as I’ve […]

I’m not sure I could pick out a significant victory for human freedom in 2012. Maybe I’m missing something, but the only good policy that’s even worth mentioning was the decision in Wisconsin to rein in the special privileges and excessive compensation for government workers. But there definitely have been lots of sad developments. The […]