Actually, the title of this post should probably read, “The Good, Good, Good, Bad, and the Ugly.” That’s because Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan has low tax rates, it eliminates double taxation, and it wipes out loopholes, and those are three very big and very good things. The bad part, as I explain here, is […]

I’m very enthusiastic – but also a little worried – about Herman Cain’s tax plan. So when I got the opportunity to write a short column for the New York Times, I explained that his proposal was very good tax policy, in large part because it is based on the same principles as the flat […]

I like the overall approach of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. As I recently wrote, it focuses on lower tax rates, elimination of double taxation, and repeal of corrupt and inefficient loopholes. But I included a very important caveat. The intermediate stage of his three-step plan would enable politicians to impose both an income tax […]

I’m normally disappointed when religious figures comment on economics, particularly since they often turn the individual call to charity into a blank check for government-coerced redistribution. This runs contrary to individual choice, free will, and morality. So I’m delighted that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, writing for  L’Osservatore Romano, the quasi-official newspaper of the Vatican,  persuasively explains […]

The White House has announced that it is nominating Alan Krueger, a professor at Princeton, to be the new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. In a Freudian copy-editing slip, the Fox News story (at least as of 8:44 a.m.) says “Krueger’s job will be to provide policy prescriptions on ways to spur unemployment.” […]

I testified before the House Ways & Means Committee earlier today. As always, my trip inside the belly of the beast was an interesting adventure. The tax-writing committee was holding a hearing on the value-added tax. I was on a panel with five other witnesses, and all of the other people testifying were sympathetic to […]

The main political goal of the left is to seduce Republicans into supporting higher taxes. Bluntly stated, all of their fiscal policy goals require more tax revenue coming to Washington. The most important factor (from their perspective) is that they can’t make government much bigger than it is right now without a major tax increase. […]

I recently took part in a symposium on “The Budget Deficit and U.S. Competitiveness.” Put together by the Council on Foreign Relations, five of us were asked to concisely explain our thoughts on the issue. Here’s some of what I wrote: Excessive government spending can slow growth by diverting labor and capital from more productive […]

Sooner or later, there will be a giant battle in Washington over the value-added tax. The people who want bigger government (and the people who are willing to surrender to big government) understand that a new source of tax revenue is needed to turn the United States into a European-style social welfare state. But that’s […]

I didn’t watch President Obama’s interview with Bill O’Reilly a couple of days ago, and that’s probably a good thing since I probably would have suffered a stroke if I actually heard Obama state, “I didn’t raise taxes once.” This was such an absurd display of mendacity that even the left-leaning PolitiFact people had no […]