Policy
Lottery revenues rarely increased overall education funding. Instead, they replaced general fund dollars, freeing up politicians to spend on other priorities without having to raise taxes.
... See moreA new paper from economists at the Joint Committee on Taxation finds the Laffer curve peaks at about a 40% top federal income tax rate, considering the effects on all federal taxes, behavior and the economy. Federal revenue would go up only 0.5% if the top rate was raised from 37% to 40% (about $25 billion) and shrink if the top rate were increased
... See moreGiven the extraordinary imbalances we see in favor of the old, especially for scarce resources like houses, it is logical that pronatal policies should favor the young. Here are a few obvious things:
Control deficits and limit debt-financed elderly entitlements. Future generations are doubly burdened, first by the debt itself and the interest that
Every pound the government uses is first taken from someone. The unseen opportunity cost is that that pound could have been used to buy something, it could have been saved, or it could have been invested to improve productivity.
Every pound the government takes costs the private sector in administrative fees. Bureaucrats collect taxes, do
... See moreMore money does not increase wealth, it increases prices and transfers wealth to early recipients and spenders of the new money and credit. Whenever there are more monetary units within an economy, prices will increase unevenly, distort the structure of production, transfer wealth, and reduce the value of the monetary unit.
... See moreThe publicly held federal debt, hovering near 100 percent of GDP, has reached heights last seen at the end of World War II. Unlike fighting back against totalitarianism, today’s debt finances political convenience, short-term gratification, and avoidance of responsibility. Congress borrows because borrowing is easy, popular, and largely invisible
Trillions in new money, 9 percent inflation, or a 8 percent rise in nominal GDP tells us nothing about who received the new dollars first, whose assets inflated earliest, or who was left holding the bag of devalued cash. By aggregating away the order of receipt, these metrics reduce one of the largest wealth transfers in modern history to a “macro
... See more... See moreThe Civil War foisted upon the country the elimination of Jacksonian hard money: the greenbacks established government fiat paper, which it took 14 long years to tame; and the National Bank Act ended the separation of government from banking, effectively quasi-nationalizing and regulating the banking system, and creating an engine of governmentally
... See moreSince increased thrift-financed investments, improvements in technologies and skills, and increased quantities of natural resources relative to the number of workers make outputs more affordable, we can immediately infer from Rothbard’s analysis that to improve affordability, government needs to stop discouraging private thrift and investment, stop