Thanks to decades of reckless spending by European welfare states, the newspapers are filled with headlines about debt, default, contagion, and bankruptcy. We know that Greece and Ireland already have received direct bailouts, and other European welfare states are getting
There are two crises facing Social Security. First the program has a gigantic unfunded liability, largely caused by demographics. Second, the program is a very bad deal for younger workers, making them pay record amounts of tax in exchange for
Grousing about the GOP’s timidity in the battle against big government will probably become an ongoing theme over the next few months, and let’s start with two items that don’t bode well for fiscal discipline. First, it appears that Republicans
The news is going from bad to worse for Ireland. The Irish Independent is reporting that the Swiss Central Bank no longer will accept Irish government bonds as collateral. The story also notes that one of the world’s largest bond
The mid-term elections were a rejection of President Obama’s big-government agenda, but those results don’t necessarily mean better policy. We should not forget, after all, that Democrats rammed through Obamacare even after losing the special election to replace Ted Kennedy
Republicans did a terrible job last time they were in power. The created a new entitlement program for prescription drugs. They further centralized education with the no-bureaucrat-left-behind legislation. They undid the positive reforms of the 1990s with central-panning subsidies and
This post could be entitled, “So many dumb bureaucrats, so little time,” but let’s have some fun and turn it into a contest. Which bone-headed decision by a local government best exemplifies mindless bureaucracy, politically correct nonsense, and government waste?
There’s a lot of attention being paid to yesterday’s landslide vote in the House to prevent a big tax increase next year. If you’re a glass-half-full optimist, you will be celebrating the good news for taxpayers. If you’re a glass-half
Sometimes it’s not a good idea to be at the top of a list. And now that Japan has announced a five-percentage point reduction in its corporate tax rate, the United States will have the dubious honor of imposing the
Okay, perhaps the title of this post is not quite as memorable as Charlton Heston’s famous line from Planet of the Apes, but it certainly captures my sentiments after reading an article in Slate that calls for the elimination of
Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute blogs at Carpe Diem and perhaps is best known as being the go-to guy for things-are-better-than-you-think statistics. But he has bravely waded into the PC battlefield with a new video examining lower test
When big-spending politicians in Washington pontificate about “deficit reduction,” taxpayers should be very wary. Crocodile tears about red ink almost always are a tactic that the political class uses to make tax increases more palatable. The way it works is
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
In my fiscal policy speeches, I sometimes try to get a laugh out of audiences by including a Powerpoint slide with this image. Leading up to this slide, I talk about the Armey/Forbes flat tax and explain that it would
Compared to ideal policy, the deal announced last night between congressional Republicans and President Obama is terrible. Compared to what I expected to happen, the deal announced last night is pretty good. In other words, grading this package depends on
Much to my surprise, Senate Republicans held firm yesterday and blocked President Obama’s soak-the-rich proposal to raise tax rates next year on investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. I fully expected that GOPers would fold on this issue several months
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this morning that the unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent last month. As you can see from the chart, the White House claimed that if we enacted the so-called stimulus, the unemployment rate today
The fiscal disintegration of Europe is bad news, though I confess to a bit of malicious glee every time I read about welfare states such as Greece, Ireland, and Portugal getting to the point where they no longer have the
The Chairmen of President Obama’s Fiscal Commission have a new draft proposal that is filled, according to Reuters, with “sharp spending and benefit cuts.” That’s music to my ears, so I quickly flipped to the back of the report in
I’m understandably fond of my video exposing the flaws of Keynesian stimulus theory, but I think my former intern has an excellent contribution to the debate with this new 5-minute mini-documentary. [youtube D9kfMx8Llcc] The main insight of the mini-documentary is
There’s been a lot of heated discussion about various preferences, deductions, credits, shelters, and other loopholes in the tax code. Some of this debate has revolved around whether it is legitimate to refer to these provisions as “tax expenditures” or
Back during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama proposed several tax increases. Some of those tax hikes, such as the proposed higher income tax rates on investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other “rich” taxpayers, have received a lot of public
I have many pet peeves, but one that causes me endless frustration is the Washington “spending cut” scam. This happens when politicians increase spending, but claim that they’re cutting spending because they previously had planned to make government even bigger.
One of my first blog posts (and the first one to get any attention) highlighted the amusing/embarrassing irony of having Chinese students laugh at Treasury Secretary Geithner when he claimed the United States had a strong-dollar policy. I suspect that
I’ve already written about the terrible work of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO did an awful job on the stimulus, for instance, repeatedly asserting that diverting money from the private sector to government somehow would create jobs. CBO also
