In the famous “Bridge of Death” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, some of the knights are asked to name their favorite color. One of them  mistakenly says blue instead of yellow and is hurled into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. I can sympathize with the unfortunate chap. If asked my least favorite part […]

The business pages are reporting that Chrysler will be fully owned by Fiat after that Italian company buys up remaining shares. I don’t know what this means about the long-term viability of Chrysler, but we can say with great confidence that the company will be better off now that the parent company is headquartered outside the United […]

It’s not easy being a libertarian, particularly if you follow public policy. Thomas Jefferson almost certainly was right when he wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Heck, just look at how small government used to be in the developed world compared to where it […]

It’s no secret that I dislike the value-added tax. But this isn’t because of its design. The VAT, after all, would be (presumably) a single-rate, consumption-based system, just like the flat tax and national sales tax. And that’s a much less destructive way of raising revenue compared to America’s corrupt and punitive internal revenue code. […]

One of my missions in life is fundamental tax reform. I would like to replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax. Though what I really want is a tax system that minimizes the damage of extracting money from the productive sector of the economy, so I’ll take any system […]

As a long-time advocate of tax reform, I’m not a fan of distortionary loopholes in the tax code. Ideally, we would junk the 74,000-page internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax – meaning one low rate, no double taxation, and no favoritism.* The right kind of tax reform would […]

Did President Obama and his team of Chicago cronies deliberately target the Tea Party in hopes of thwarting free speech and political participation? Was this part of a campaign to win the 2012 election by suppressing Republican votes? Perhaps, but I’ve warned that it’s never a good idea to assume top-down conspiracies when corruption, incompetence, […]

In recent months, I’ve displayed uncharacteristic levels of optimism on issues ranging from Obamacare to the Laffer Curve. But this doesn’t mean I’m now a blind Pollyanna. We almost always face an uphill battle in our efforts to restrain the power and greed of the political class. And in some areas, such as the fight […]