Moral panics are not a recipe for good policy.

The government is undermining public health by going after e-cigarettes.

More government misbehavior escapes punishment.

Some politicians are so short-sighted and greedy that they raise the tax burden by so much that revenues actually fall.

More evidence that higher tax rates don’t always lead to more revenue.

Failures of greedy politicians to grab more money should be cheered.

What can philosoraptor teach us about supply side economics?

The United Nations is not nearly as bad as other international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or the International Monetary Fund. But that’s because the U.N. tends to be completely ineffective. So even when the bureaucrats push for bad policy, they don’t have much ability to move the ball in the wrong direction. But […]

What do cigarettes and capital gains have in common? Well, they both start with the same letter, so maybe the Cookie Monster could incorporate them into his favorite song, but I’m thinking about something else. Specifically, both cigarettes and capital gains tell us something important about tax policy, the Laffer Curve, and the limits of political bullying. […]

As a taxpayer, I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies. They consume a lot of money, pay themselves extravagant (and tax-free!) salaries, and generally promote statist policies. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a prime example. Originally created for benign purposes such as gathering statistics, it now is a bloated bureaucracy […]