Arthur Okun, Class Warfare, Redistribution, and Income Growth
“The low-income worker is a net beneficiary of bigger government for about 10 years. But as time goes on, the worker would be far better off with smaller government and faster growth. Different assumptions will lead to different results, of course. My goal is simply to help readers understand two things: bigger government leads to less economic growth, and less growth leads to big income losses over time.” ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
READ MOREBiden’s Infrastructure Boondoggle
“The immediate lesson from all of this is that Biden’s plan is a boondoggle waiting to happen (just as would have been the case with Trump). The longer-term lesson is that we should get the federal government out of the business of infrastructure.” ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
READ MOREJanet Yellen Is Serious, and That’s Really Sad
“Yellen plainly feels individual U.S. tax rates aren’t high enough, so she seeks global tax harmonization on the corporate level in order to get another swipe at individuals. On their own, Yellen’s desires rate ridicule. As evidenced by the trillions Treasury collects every year from taxpayers in order to fund a government with powers ‘few and defined,’ Americans are already overtaxed.” ~ John Tamny
READ MOREThree Reasons to Reject Biden’s Tax Harmonization Scheme for “Global Minimum Taxation”
“It goes without saying that if politicians are able to create a tax cartel, it will merely be a matter of time before they ratchet up the tax rate. Simply stated, they won’t have to worry about an exodus of jobs and investment because all countries will be obliged to have the same bad approach.” ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
READ MOREEdward Stringham on Biden’s Proposed Tax Hikes (Video)
AIER President Edward Stringham joins Fox Business Kennedy to discuss the repercussions of the president’s intentions to raise taxes.
READ MOREHow Will We Pay for a $1.9 Trillion Spending Bill?
“Politicians are quick to ignore the costs of government spending in proposing legislation and obscure those costs by issuing debt rather than raising revenues. It is politically popular to issue debt and send checks to everyone. The benefits of the policy are clear: people get checks. The costs, which ripple out through financial markets as interest rates are bid up, are difficult to tie to the policy.” ~ Nicolás Cachanosky
READ MOREThe 1% Pay 37% of Federal Income Taxes
The IRS has released new tax data that demonstrate how much we’ve been fooled by claims that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. Those claims are based on statistical errors and incomplete data. Now that we have the complete data, we gain more per …
READ MORETroubles with the Economists’ Case for a Carbon Tax
Carbon emissions are not, contrary to what many economists and non-economists seem to believe, approaching the idea of a pure externality; their costs are only partially external to the main transaction.
READ MOREHipster Antitrust Is Overdue for a Backlash
Democrats can reject neo-Brandeisian antitrust along with the other pillars of left-populism, or seek a victory that in many ways will prolong rather than end the Trump era.
READ MOREDecrying Income Inequality Is a Tactic to Gain More Power for Government
The 2020 presidential field is saturated with candidates decrying wealth inequality and making the argument to soak the rich. One front-runner, for instance, is constantly denouncing “the millionaires and the billionaires.” Ominously, a New York Times …
READ MOREThe Times’s Editorial Page Lies with Statistics
When debating tax policy it is important to use empirical evidence to inform the discussion of what rates the top earners currently pay and what rates we would like them to pay, or if a rate change is even warranted at all.
READ MORETariffs Tax Your Freedom
Freedom goes down when tariff revenues go up. It’s high time we revisited the Declaration of Independence and renewed our commitment to freedom.
READ MORE