The “Tax Expenditure” Con Job

For both political and policy reasons, the left is desperately trying to maneuver Republicans into going along with a tax increase. And they are smart to make this their top goal. After all, it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to increase the burden of government spending without more revenue coming to [...]

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Words I Never Thought Would Cross My Lips: “Government Is even More Incompetent than I Thought”

Regular readers know that I don’t have high regard for government. I’m willing to believe just about anything bad about politicians and bureaucrats, and I am not the least bit surprised when I hear horror stories about counterproductive government programs riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. So you can imagine that it takes something truly [...]

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Three Simple Rules to Keep Republicans from Being Seduced by Dishonest and Orwellian Word Games from the Left on Tax Reform and Tax Increases

Those who had the misfortune of seeing President Obama go after “tax breaks for corporate jets” as part of his press conference may be wondering why he was attacking a provision that was in his so-called stimulus and enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2009. But that’s just routine politics. The folks in the White [...]

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Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor?

Here’s a new video, less than 2-1/2 minutes, pointing out some of the key differences between rich nations and poor nations. Not surprisingly, small government, free markets, and sound institutions are critical. I narrated a similar video, released more than two years ago, that makes similar points. The production values are not as high, but [...]

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The Libertarian Paradise of Argentina???

Okay, the title of this post is a huge overstatement. I’ve already noted here that Argentina is not a good role model and warned here how that Obama is repeating many of the mistakes that undermined Argentinian prosperity. But I’m nonetheless impressed that Argentina actually allows people at the Lujan Zoo to freely choose whether [...]

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Tom Sowell’s Latest Column Is a Good Birthday Present for Me

As far as I can tell, everything that Thomas Sowell writes is worth reading, but I especially like how he is so effective at linking his arguments to the underlying principles of a free society. And when he writes a column focused on those underlying principles, I can’t help but get inspired. He reminds me [...]

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Two Examples of Reprehensible and Outrageous TSA Behavior…and Senator Rand Paul Speaks Up for Common Sense

I’ve largely stopped beating up on the TSA because it seems like a dog-bites-man or sun-rises-in-the-east issue. Do we really learn anything by repetitively discussing the stupidity on one bureaucracy? But sometimes the idiocy reaches such an extreme level that it can’t be ignored. Here are the nauseating details of how TSA bureaucrats confiscated a [...]

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Block-Granting Medicaid Is a Long-Overdue Way of Restoring Federalism and Promoting Good Fiscal Policy

This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why Medicaid should be shifted to the states. As I note in the title of this post, it’s good federalism policy and good fiscal policy. But the video also explains that Medicaid reform is good health policy since it creates an opportunity to deal [...]

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When Politicians Make Lots of Money in Financial Markets, Should We Assume Corruption?

A new study revealed that politicians are very good investors, earning significantly above-average returns when they put their own money in financial markets. CNBC interviewed me about this research and asked whether it was a sign of something akin to insider trading. Regular readers know I’m a big foe of political corruption and have repeatedly [...]

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Should American Taxpayers Finance another Big Fat Greek Bailout?

The notion that American taxpayers are about to subsidize another Greek bailout (via the Keystone Cops at the IMF) is way beyond economically foolish. It is also morally offensive. To turn Winston Churchill’s famous quote upside down: “Never have so many paid so much to subsidize such an undeserving few.” Let’s start with a few [...]

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Mean and Unfair, but Funny

This barely fits into the category of political humor, and that’s only if you want to engage in unfair stereotyping of vegans as effete left wingers. That’s inappropriate, I’m sure, but I laughed, so I’m going to share with the rest of the class.

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The Continuing Wussification of America

Life is filled with risk. We can deal with that two ways. The first option is to allow people to make educated choices, thus promoting individual responsibility. The second option is to have politicians micro-manage our decisions, thus promoting passivity. Not surprisingly, America is drifting in the wrong direction, allowing busybodies to regulate every aspect [...]

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The IMF: An Equal-Opportunity Purveyor of Bad Advice

As a general rule, the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund are not awful people or fire-breathing leftists. But they are voices for the establishment. And, at the upper levels, IMF staff seem overly solicitous of the views of the big nations, which means that they are indirectly attentive to interest groups (such as big [...]

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Time to Shut Down the Department of Agriculture

I have a confession to make: I have a hard time making up my mind. At times, I am overcome by indecision. To be more specific, I can’t figure out which department of the federal government should be shut down first. In the past, I’ve written about the squalid waste and corruption at the Department [...]

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A “Right” to Stolen Property? A Great Day for Human Rights!

I’m often amazed at how the political class concocts new rights that can only be fulfilled by trampling on genuine freedoms. In a previous post, I mocked Finland for deciding that broadband access was a human right (which presumably means Finns were being oppressed before Al Gore invented the Internet). Another post sarcastically noted that [...]

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Arguing about Class-Warfare Taxation with Robert Reich

I was on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show recently, where I debated against Robert Reich. I made (what I hope are) good points about the Laffer Curve and the big-government policies of both Bush and Obama. The bad news, as least from a personal perspective, is that the last half of the interview became a debate [...]

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I Fantasize about a World with No Income Tax, but…

Most people fantasize about supermodels (at least most guys, I have no clue about females). But I’m different. I dream about a world with limited government, sort of like what America’s Founding Fathers had in mind. One of the best things about this fantasy world is that we would not need an income tax. Indeed, [...]

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Andrew Sullivan Has No Idea What He’s Talking about, but I Agree with His Conclusion

Even though he’s become rather partisan in recent years, I still enjoy an occasional visit to Andrew Sullivan’s blog. But I was rather amused last night when I read one of his posts, in which he was discussing whether government spending helps or hurts economic performance. He took the view that a bigger public sector [...]

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Is Government Really this Stupid?…and a True Confession from My Sordid Past (Maybe)

I realize this questions answers itself, but I’m continuously amazed at the bone-headed decisions made by politicians and bureaucrats. Indeed, I wish I had this example for my recent post comparing incompetent officials in the United States with their counterparts in the United Kingdom. A kid in Indiana played a prank involving a blow-up doll [...]

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IMF Recommendation for Europe: Double Down on the Approach that Caused the Sovereign Debt Crisis

Many European nations face a sovereign debt crisis because of excessive spending caused by too much redistribution. The obvious – and only – solution to this crisis is to reverse the policies that caused the problem. So take a wild guess about what the International Monetary Fund recommended: Did the international bureaucracy recommend that nations [...]

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Obama’s Green Energy Scam

I chat with Neil Cavuto about the “perfect storm” of bad government policy.

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FATCA Law is an International Version of Obamacare’s 1099 Provision, a Nightmare for Cross-Border Economic Activity that Is Undermining Investment in America

One of the tax increases buried in Obamacare was an onerous and intrusive “1099″ scheme that would have required businesses to collect tax identification numbers for just about any vendor and then send paperwork to the IRS whenever they did more than $600 of business. o Send one of your sales people to New York [...]

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“…maintaining NATO is like keeping forts in South Dakota to defend settlers against hostile Indians.”

That line is from a great column by Steve Chapman, who wonders why NATO still exists. If you read this column and Mark Steyn’s recent National Review article (which I blogged about here), you will have a good grasp of what makes libertarian foreign policy very compelling. Defense Secretary Robert Gates went to Europe recently [...]

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When Will Obama Have an Epiphany on the Road to Greece?

After reading a story about economic liberalization in Cuba, I wondered (somewhat tongue in cheek) whether we should trade Obama for Castro. I also blogged about the former socialist president of Brazil, who seemed to have more sense than Obama because he recognized that you can’t redistribute unless people first produce. We now have another [...]

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Which Nation Has Dumber Bureaucrats and More Political Correctness, the United States or United Kingdom?

Somebody just sent me a story from the UK-based Daily Telegraph about two little boys who got in trouble for playing army at school. You may think I’m joking, but here’s a blurb from the report. Staff at Nathaniel Newton Infant School in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, reprimanded the two boys after they were seen making pistol [...]

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Weiner Is a Perfect Symbol of the Permanent Political Class (Scientific Name: Leechus Profligus)

Michelle Malkin hits the nail on the head, explaining that ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner is a wretched (but not unusual) example of the modern politician – a life spent mooching from the public, lining his pockets while making life harder for people in the productive sector of the economy. And every time people like Weiner (including [...]

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The War on Drugs Is as Foolish as the War on Poverty

I’ve written before about how the War on Poverty has likely resulted in more poverty. I don’t know if the War on Drugs results in more drug use, but I have posted about how it is a costly failure that increases overall crime. The good folks at Reason TV have just released a video about [...]

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The Economy Will Suffer if Republicans Sell Out on Taxes

News reports indicate that the left is putting enormous pressure on Republicans to sell out as part of the “Biden Group” negotiations between Congress and the Vice President. I explained the other day why the left is so anxious to get GOPers to surrender on the tax issue. Simply stated, the left’s fiscal agenda requires [...]

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Why on Earth Should We Consider Tax Increases When Politicians and Bureaucrats Allow Multi-Billion Dollar Losses of Taxpayer Money Because of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse?

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, or maybe I’m a bit stiff-necked, but I will never relent in my opposition to tax increases so long as the crowd in Washington is spending money on things that are not appropriate functions of the federal government. But that’s just one obstacle that has to be overcome. I will [...]

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Nobel Prize Winner Analyzes the Obama Growth Gap

I’ve explained before that one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Obamanomics is that the economy is suffering from sub-par growth, something that is particularly damning since normally one expects to see faster-than-average growth following an economic downturn. In a recent presentation, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago included a couple of [...]

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