Archive for Roy Cordato

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

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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 32 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 | Roy Cordato | 7 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 7 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 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 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 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued

Free Markets and Highest Valued Use

Do free markets allocate resources to their highest valued use? It would seem that for the readers of Ideas on Liberty, the answer is a “no-brainer.” Indeed, the idea that voluntary exchange channels resources to where the value of output will be greatest has traditionally been one of the foundational arguments for a free-market economy. [...]

1May2000 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued

Invisible Hand Obsolete?

Allen Murray’s Wall Street Journal article “Pushing Adam Smith Past the Millennium” (June 21, 1999) purports to discuss the relevancy of Adam Smith’s invisible hand for the 21st century. In reality, Murray is not talking about Smith or his invisible-hand metaphor at all. The assumption beneath his conclusion that “Smith’s ideas will need some rethinking [...]

1Nov1999 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued
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