Recently wealthy investor Warren Buffet has been in the news for his advocacy of higher taxes. But is government — politics, in other words — the best way to allocate resources? In a statement on the KochFacts website, Charles Koch disagrees with Buffet: As part of the public discourse on government overspending and fiscal irresponsibility, Charles Koch offered the following public response to media queries | Read More »
On the C-SPAN television program Washington Journal (Sunday August 14, 2011) Democratic strategist Mark Mellman appeared and gave viewers a lesson on how the political left lies and distorts in order to score political points against what it sees as easy targets. Mellman said: “The tea party comes out, and has really done real damage to this country. Most people in this country think it’s | Read More »
Despite claims made in a Wichita Eagle op-ed by its former editor Davis Merritt, we desperately need a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution. (Balanced-budget amendment is unworkable, August 2, 2001) Merritt calls the promise of a balanced budget amendment a “cruel deception” that “limits imagination and progress.” He gives three reasons as to why we should not adopt such an amendment: First: | Read More »
A recent op-ed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Wall Street Journal (Why Americans Are So Angry: Republicans want the entire burden of deficit reduction to be carried by the elderly, the sick, children and working families), besides holding faulty reasoning in every paragraph, hold a few factual errors that deserve discussion. Raise tax rates to raise revenue For example, Sanders writes regarding | Read More »
While most critics of government spending focus on entitlements, regular appropriations, and earmarks, there is a category of spending that not many have paid much attention. This spending is called “tax expenditures.” This year as part of the debate or controversy over raising the federal debt ceiling, attention is being paid to the cost of these tax expenditures, although the term commonly used is “loophole.” | Read More »
Appearing on the MSNBC morning program Morning Joe, energy investor T. Boone Pickens let us know that despite his no-nonsense business-like approach to supporting what he believes to be in America’s best interests, it’s really all about him and what profits him. But program hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski didn’t catch that. Pickens appeared on the program to gain support for legislation he is | Read More »
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” — Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman Is this true? Do federal grants cause state and/or local tax increases in the future after the government grant ends? Economists Russell S. Sobel and George R. Crowley have examined the evidence, and they find the answer is yes. Their research paper is titled Do Intergovernmental Grants Create Ratchets in State | Read More »
As our nation’s leaders consider the possibility of raising income tax rates, we need to be aware of the negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on the economy and make sure we resist the lure of higher taxes. This is especially important even if the new higher tax rates are confined to to the rich. The concept of marginal tax rates is important to | Read More »
This column is cross-posted from Voice for Liberty in Wichita. The fact that the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce supports a tax increase reminded me of a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Stephen Moore that shows how very often, local chambers of commerce support principles of crony capitalism instead of pro-growth policies that support free enterprise and genuine capitalism. We may soon have | Read More »
There are many examples of how the conventional wisdom regarding regulation is wrong: Republicans and conservatives are in bed with government, seeking to unshackle business from the burden of government regulation. Democrats and liberals, on the other hand, are busy crafting regulations to protect the common man from the evils of big business. As it turns out, both Democrats and Republicans love creating regulations, and | Read More »
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