Archive for Roy Cordato

Roy Cordato is vice president for research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, NC.

Saving, Investment, and the Income Tax

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when I was an economist at the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, my boss and tax policy mentor, the late Norman Ture, had a favorite saying: “People aren’t taxed. Activities are.” It is this proposition—that taxation of any kind always has the effect of penalizing [...]

28Mar2012 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Buffett Rule Will Create Jobs?

In the Raleigh News and Observer last fall, David McAdams, associate professor of economics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, claimed—contrary to even Keynesian economics—that President Obama’s proposed tax on millionaires would create jobs. The so-called Buffett rule, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is supposed to ensure that “millionaires and billionaires” pay no [...]

23Feb2012 | | 5 comments | Continued

Taxing Investment

The income tax double-taxes saving relative to consumption, that is, reduces the returns to saving twice, while reducing the returns to consumption just once.

23Jan2012 | | 13 comments | Continued

The VAT: Not Just Another Tax

Recently there has been a great deal of speculation about how the U.S. government will deal with its massive budget deficits and increasing levels of debt. For readers of The Freeman the answer is rather simple: Since most of what the federal government does goes beyond its “legitimate” role, cut spending. Drastically. Discussions about balancing [...]

25Aug2010 | | 3 comments | Continued

Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor

“The only way to create wealth is for people to do useful things for each other.” “[In a free market] the rich become rich only because consumers voluntarily give them money in exchange for the valuable goods and services they offer to society.” “Wealth is only possible through free markets, allowing the people to decide [...]

21May2009 | | 6 comments | Continued

Deficit Spending and Future Generations: Not What You Might Think

Ultimately, the real choice is not between deficit-financed and tax-financed spending. The moral question is whether we should have more spending and bigger government with less liberty or less spending with a smaller government and more liberty. The hand-wringing on the left and right about passing the cost of “stimulating” our economy onto future generations is misplaced. No matter how it’s financed, Obama’s new spending has the potential to stimulate only one thing: the size, scope, and power of government.

21May2009 | | 36 comments | Continued

Too Much Freedom

Roy Cordato is vice president for research and resident scholar at the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina. It’s been said that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For politicians, bureaucrats, and many activists, when the only tool they have is coercion, the cause of every [...]

1Jul2008 | | 8 comments | Continued

A Carbon Tax Will Fix Global Warming? It Just Aint So!

Roy Cordato (rcordato@johnlocke.org) is vice president for research at the John Locke Foundation and a member of the visiting economics faculty at North Carolina State University. It amazes me how so many newspaper columnists have no qualms about voicing opinions on topics they clearly know nothing about. This is the case with Anne Applebaum, politics [...]

1May2007 | | 1 comment | Continued

A Higher Gasoline Tax Will “Solve Everything”?

Regrettably, I have to criticize someone who, in the past, I have admired a great deal. John Tierney is an iconoclastic columnist for the New York Times who has been writing on environmental issues for at least a decade. His now-classic 1996 Times Magazine story critical of recycling was a well-researched article that I have [...]

1Apr2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Climatologist Patrick Michaels gives us a nontechnical and readable exposé of the “myths and facts” surrounding global warming. For skeptics of the mainstream global-warming hypothesis, that is, that dramatic, human-induced warming is occurring and will have cataclysmic effects if not checked by lifestyle-altering public policies, this book is a great read and an indispensable reference. [...]

14Dec2005 | | 0 comments | Continued

Corporations Should Pay Higher Taxes?

The May 18 Washington Post article “Why Companies Pay Less” is less remarkable for what it says than for who is saying it. Its author is not Ralph Nader or Robert McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. It is Steven Rattner, a well-known investment banker and a founder of the Quadrangle Group, a large private [...]

1Nov2004 | | 9 comments | Continued

The State of the Air: Propaganda, Not Science

Each May the American Lung Association (ALA) issues “The State of the Air” in which it reports on ground-level ozone pollution county by county over a three-year period. The study gives each county a grade (A-F) based on what are called “ozone exceedence days” and calculates the number of people “put at risk” for respiratory [...]

1Oct2003 | | 1 comment | Continued

In Bureaucracy We Trust? It Just Ain’t So!

What makes the American capitalist system, as opposed to the “capitalism” practiced in other countries, work so well? If your answer includes flexible prices or relatively low taxes, secure property rights or efficient capital markets, you would be woefully misguided. According to Thomas Friedman in the July 28 New York Times (“In Oversight We Trust”), [...]

1Nov2002 | | 2 comments | Continued

The Impossibility of Harming the Environment

“The ‘polluter pays principle’ states that whoever is responsible for damage to the environment should bear the costs associated with it.” —United Nations Environmental Programme1 The “polluter pays principle” appeals to our sense of justice. People should be held responsible for their actions, and polluters who cause damage to others should “pay” for that damage. [...]

1May2002 | | 0 comments | Continued

Terrorism Is Good for the Economy?

Following the disastrous attack on New York, Washington, and our country, the purveyors of economic quackery began spilling gallons of ink in describing how they think the tragedy will affect the U.S. economy. One of the most prominent views to emerge, and also the most wrongheaded, is the idea that the destruction of the World [...]

1Dec2001 | | 1 comment | Continued

Energy Taxes and the Pretense of Knowledge

“The current net tax per gallon [of diesel fuel] is 13 percent of the price, while the environmental cost per gallon is 50 percent of price. The tax on this fuel could be raised substantially to promote its efficient use.” 1 Typically economists oppose excise taxes on the grounds that they distort market prices and [...]

1Oct2001 | | 0 comments | Continued

High Gasoline Prices Are Your Fault?

Who should be blamed for the high oil and gasoline prices? OPEC? The oil companies? The government? According to the New York Times’s Floyd Norris, if you chose any of those you would be wrong. Writing on June 23, Mr. Norris places all the blame for the current “energy crisis,” as he calls it, squarely [...]

1Nov2000 | | 0 comments | Continued
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