In a new article in the Wall Street Journal, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Richard Vedder and Journal Senior Economics Writer Stephen Moore explain why “Higher Taxes Won’t Reduce the Deficit: History shows that when Congress gets more revenue, the pols spend it”: The draft recommendations of the president’s commission on deficit eduction call for…
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Today, President Obama announced that his administration would freeze the pay of federal employees at their current level for two years.� Well, that’s a start, if the following chart from Political Calculations showing the relative pay and benefits of federal workers with respect to the average income earner in the private sector is any…
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We are entering an era of high inflation, to judge by the massive growth of the money supply in the United States, Europe and Asia, and the stubbornness of central bankers who insist that high unemployment demands the creation of even more money. The last time the world went through a similar period was…
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As the government of Ireland undergoes scrutiny and criticism for its poorly mismanaged fiscal house, the media risks missing the primary lesson. Poor public sector incentives drive politicians to enact policies that defy the laws of economics. There is no such thing as a free lunch�not even a Keynesian lunch of government issued corn…
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In response to growing public opposition to the gigantic spending by the federal government, President Barack Obama in 2009 called on his Cabinet to identify a combined $100 million dollars in budget cuts compared to the $3.5 trillion federal budget as a whole (not including the $787 “stimulus package” or the $83 billion in…
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How can the government increase the amount of money it collects in taxes without increasing tax rates?� Or rather, for politicians looking to remain as blameless as possible when their constituents get their new, higher tax bills, how can they make it look like they�re not increasing taxes when they�re taking more in taxes?…
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The Honorable Erskine Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform 1650 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20504 Dear Mr. Bowles: We are writing to you and other members of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform as individuals who have worked in national security affairs for decades for the Department of…
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Politicians have been advocating a value added tax (VAT) for decades, and with the huge projected federal deficits interest in a VAT seems to be increasing lately. Last Spring Paul Volker was suggesting one, and David Theroux recently noted in his blog Paul Krugman�s support. Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici suggest a 6.5% �debt…
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In a roundtable discussion on the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission, Nobel Prize laureate and hyper-Keynesian economist Paul Krugman came clean on his view on ABC�s �This Week with Christiane Amanpour,� regarding how to reduce the gigantic federal deficit that he has been so supportive in seeing created: death panels and a national Value Added…
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A funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth: Americans discovered that most federal �stimulus� funds were being used to stimulate government, not the economy. I was on the road recently, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana through a long stretch of Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Ala., then to the outskirts of…
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