Topic: Fiscal Policy

The New Status Quo for Public Finance

– December 13, 2021

“After the 2008 financial crisis, the US never returned to pre-crisis growth levels. My expectation is that unless private investors find a means of avoiding this subsidization of federal borrowing, we never will.” ~ James L. Caton

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The Federal Government’s Debt Ceiling Needs More Teeth

– December 4, 2021

“If Congress perceives the debt ceiling as a credibly binding constraint, then the ceiling must be set one level above Congress. The U.S. Constitution should be amended to restrict the ability of Congress to incur more debt.” ~ Michael Makovi

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A Smarter Debt Limit Bill

– December 3, 2021

“Senate Republicans are expected to indulge in yet another futile game of bluff poker over the symbolic debt limit. They always fold in the end because Congress has no choice but to pay for obligations it has already incurred.” ~ Alan Reynolds & Steve Stein

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Doubling Down on Foolishness

– November 27, 2021

“Plans to continue down that path at a far more rapid rate, as the Biden administration proposes, are doubling down on foolishness, yet may well occur unless Americans recognize them for what they are.” ~ Gary M. Galles

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Getting Real About Taxes

– November 26, 2021

“It is high time that the federal government recognizes the creepy tax effects of inflation and gets real about taxes. It should forget about taxing unrealized capital gains, compensate victims of its inflationary policies, and begin to inflation-index everything.” ~ Robert E. Wright

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Democrats’ Minimum Tax Proposal Won’t Force Amazon to Pay More In Taxes

– November 12, 2021

“A domestic minimum tax is not good for America. Legislators should find it a plot in the ever-growing graveyard of bad Democratic tax proposals.” ~ Travis Nix

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Adam Smith, Capitation, and the Nonsense That Is the Proposed Wealth Tax

– November 11, 2021

“While the economic implications of this proposal are sufficiently flimsy to discount its claimed purpose of revenue generation, the proposed wealth tax faces a greater obstacle to its adoption: it is blatantly unconstitutional.” ~ Phillip W. Magness

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Biden’s Plan to “Tax The Rich” Will Cost the Middle Class

– November 10, 2021

“With huge budget deficits, all it would take would be some future crisis for this tax to look like a good option to policy makers. And once the rich are subject to the tax, you will be next.” ~ Randall G. Holcombe

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The Great Tax Gap Flap

– November 10, 2021

“Americans do not want to return to the days when they deliberately overpaid their taxes in order to avoid a nasty audit. And certainly any hint that the IRS was auditing middle class Americans for partisan reasons would be revolutionary in more ways than one.” ~ Robert E. Wright

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Asia, Not the US Is the Main Source of Global Warming

– November 5, 2021

“Spending endless billions on lucrative subsidies for electric cars, solar and wind farms, and other boondoggles could not possibly make much difference to future worldwide greenhouse gas emissions that will continue to depend almost entirely on what Asia is doing, not the U.S.” ~ Alan Reynolds

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A New Era of Stagflation?

– November 4, 2021

“The creditors of the United States will not accept negative returns on an ever-expanding mountain of US debt indefinitely. At some point, perhaps not long from now, the US will face sharply higher interest rates and the type of budgetary constraints that were typical of profligate Third World borrowers.” ~ David P. Goldman

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A U.S. Wealth Tax Would Force Wealth Out of the U.S.

– November 1, 2021

“Since no other developed country taxes wealth in the aggressive way that the Democrats are proposing, passage of their proposed tax would result in a massive flight of human and financial capital out of the United States.” ~ John Tamny

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