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Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has a very sharp post up at the Scene that drives home a point I’ve been making for a while now. I agree entirely with his conclusion: One of the reasons I don’t think of myself as a libertarian even though they’re the group whose actual policy preferences most closely mirror mine is [...]
Filed under: economics, libertarianism, morality, taxation
Claire McCaskill, for instance, twittered, "I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri." The point of cap-and-trade, as I understand it, is that it fairly disadvantages people and businesses who are dependent on cheap coal and are harming the atmosphere. ~ [...]
Filed under: energy, environment, taxation
Like Ross and Will Wilkinson, I think there’s a ton to be said for Edward Glaeser’s case for “small-government egalitarianism”, which would be worth reading in its entirety even if the only thing you took away from it was this quotation from Woodrow Wilson: “If the government is to tell big business men how to [...]
Filed under: economics, government/law, libertarianism, taxation, urbanism
Via Andrew, I see that Michael Goldfarb apparently hasn’t been reading me: This idea [of a "defense stimulus"] is just starting to gain steam, but as yet there’s been no real argument made against such a program. Defense spending, as Donnelly explains, "not only make economic good sense, but would help close the large and [...]
Filed under: economics, government/law, taxation, war
Okay, so I’ve been meaning for a few days to say something about this Martin Feldstein op-ed, which seems to do no better in arguing that defense spending is a good route to economic stimulus than the Bill Kristol column I slapped my forehead at a while back: As President-elect Barack Obama and his economic [...]
Filed under: economics, government/law, taxation, war
Via Greg Mankiw comes a troubling picture of taxation in America: Since the early 1990s, [...] lawmakers have increasingly used the tax code instead of government spending programs to funnel money to groups of people they want to reward. Credits have been enacted to subsidize families with children, college students, and purchasers of hybrid cars, [...]
Filed under: government/law, taxation
From the Department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, I give you Lisa Schiffren: FYI — As I recall, the original Disney animated movie of Robin Hood is a very hardcore examination of the evils of taxation, how it is used by tyrants, and how it impovershes [sic] the people and destroys freedom. It’s [...]
Filed under: conservatism, taxation
The Tax Foundation lectures Barack Obama on the basics of public finance: Throughout the debate, Sen. Obama repeatedly showed an unfortunate ignorance of one of the fundamental principles of taxation: all taxes are paid by people. On multiple occasions, Obama claimed that businesses or corporations “can afford” to pay higher taxes. But such a statement [...]
Filed under: taxation
If nothing else, tonight’s debate made clear the extent to which the systematic exclusion of third-party candidates from our national political system is a travesty. On a whole host of issues – abortion, education, gun rights, excessive taxation, wasteful spending, government spying, and the limits of executive power – Bob Barr was consistently clearer and [...]
Filed under: conservatism, education, government/law, libertarianism, media/culture, politics, taxation