All Posts Tagged With: "taxation"
Ominous
From the Wall Street Journal: Ireland’s new government entered office in March with a choice: to continue pretending that more borrowing will get everyone’s bills paid in full and on time; or to face up to an insolvent banking system, work on restructuring or even defaulting on their national debt, and, in all likelihood, exit [...]
12May2011 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Kid and the Benevolent Bully
The kid had eighteen cents. The benevolent bully had a buck-forty-nine. The kid went to the corner candy store and bought a licorice pipe and a jawbreaker for two cents. He was giving serious consideration to the chewable wax lips when he overheard a big kid at the fountain ordering a large lemonade for a [...]
21Apr2011 | Roger Koopman | 8 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s Greatness Requires War and Taxes?
New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks America is great but in trouble, and he wants to take steps to preserve American preeminence. He’s right, though not in the way he thinks. In his November 11, 2010, column Brooks argued that we need some sort of National Greatness Agenda; the problem is that his conception [...]
21Apr2011 | Aeon J. Skoble | 1 comment | ContinuedHad Enough Yet?
Let’s acknowledge the debt of gratitude due every politician who put us in this predicament. Each spending vote dug the hole deeper and made it harder to get out.
8Apr2011 | Sheldon Richman | 20 comments | ContinuedThe Economic Costs of the Civil War
Even after 150 years, the Civil War evokes memories of great men and great battles. Certainly that war was a milestone in U.S. history, and on the plus side it reunited the nation and freed the slaves. Few historians, however, describe the costs of the war. Not just the 620,000 individuals who died, or the [...]
23Mar2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 7 comments | ContinuedEarth to New York Times: Governments Are Broke
The problem, the Times says, is that government does not tax people enough, nor does it spend enough money.
9Mar2011 | William L. Anderson | 19 comments | ContinuedPresidential Hubris
If we were going to spend $700 billion, it seems it would be wiser having that $700 billion going to folks who would spend that money right away. In October Barack Obama said this in defense of his opposition to extending the 2001 and 2003 tax-rate reductions for people making more than $200,000 a year. [...]
22Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedMore Income Redistribution Will End the Great Recession?
With increasingly widespread recognition of the failure of Keynesian economic policies, all the Progressives are left with are claims whose acceptance requires a suspension of one’s logical faculties. An excellent example of this is a September 2, 2010, New York Times op-ed by Robert Reich, the Clinton administration secretary of labor and professor of public [...]
24Nov2010 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Power of Freedom
WARNING: After reading this column, many of you will want to send me emails condemning me for my apostasy or telling me why I am mistaken. I welcome your feedback as I beg your indulgence. So, here goes: I don’t believe that the welfare state, or the regulatory state, inevitably leads to widespread poverty or [...]
22Oct2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 29 comments | ContinuedMemo to Alan Greenspan: Keep Quiet
I’m getting tired of Alan Greenspan. First, the former Federal Reserve chairman blamed an allegedly unregulated free market for the housing and financial debacle. Now he favors repealing the Bush-era tax cuts. This has a certain sad irony. Recall that Greenspan once was an associate of Ayn Rand, the philosophical novelist who provided a moral [...]
22Oct2010 | John Stossel | 10 comments | ContinuedDeficit Hawks or War Hawks?
Last month I asked if the American people can afford a world-girdling foreign policy more befitting an empire than a republic. Look at it this way: War hawks make poor deficit hawks. Facing a $13 trillion national debt and trillion-dollar-plus annual budget deficits, we can’t afford to be complacent about foreign interventions costing $12 billion [...]
22Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Paradox of the Welfare State
Welfare states face an inescapable paradox: The level of production needed to sustain a welfare state cannot be sustained by a welfare state. This paradox is created by policies that encourage the redistribution and consumption of wealth while discouraging its creation. In the face of such perverse incentives, living standards must fall even though, for [...]
22Sep2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 24 comments | ContinuedHow to Create the Illusion of Low Taxes
To the surprise of opponents of big government, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates that taxes at all levels of government take only 9.2 percent of our income, the lowest rate since Harry Truman was president. USA Today and various news-media personalities, like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, have used this statistic to hammer [...]
22Sep2010 | D.W. MacKenzie | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Grasping Macroeconomic Managers
There remains the unalterable fact that if the tax cuts expire, politicians will control the money.
17Sep2010 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | ContinuedPaying for Tax Cuts?
Tax cuts don’t cost money; government programs do.
3Sep2010 | Sheldon Richman | 20 comments | ContinuedThe Evil of Government Debt
As we’ve seen in the last two issues, Destutt de Tracy, writing in early nineteenth-century France, had solid insights about the market process and government spending as a form of consumption not investment. In light of that, no one will be surprised that Tracy opposed government borrowing. In this day of trillion-dollar-plus federal deficits, his [...]
25Aug2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedThe 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-
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