Talk-radio host Neal Boortz is no fan of the nation’s capital. “The place gives me the creeps,” he said on this week’s Scribecast. Boortz, a self-described libertarian who first visited Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, said federal bureaucrats have given the city a bad reputation. “I came to know Washington as a symbol of freedom, of liberty, of all that made this country great,” Boortz said. “And now when I come to this city, I see these people walking on the sidewalk and I just think, yeah, what cubicle are … More
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
As discussed yesterday, the most important number in Obama’s budget is that the burden of government spending will be at least $2 trillion higher in 10 years if the President’s plan is enacted. But there are also some very unsightly warts in the revenue portion of the President’s budget. Americans for Tax Reform has a [...]
How Can Obama Look at these Two Charts and Conclude that America Should Have Higher Double Taxation of Dividends and Capital Gains? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent.
Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax …
New Academic Study Confirms Previous IMF Analysis, Shows that Lower Tax Rates Are the Best Way to Reduce Tax Evasion is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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President Obama used his State of the Union address Tuesday to outline his idea of fairness. To put it simply, that means redistributing wealth by raising taxes on the most successful Americans. “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes,” Obama declared. He added: “Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.” Heritage’s Curtis Dubay … More
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
In the past 20-plus years, I’ve seen all sorts of arguments for class-warfare taxation.These include: President Obama says he wants higher tax rates for fairness, even if the government doesn’t collect any revenue. Rich leftists say they want higher taxes because they can afford to pay, but then refuse when offered a chance to cough [...]
Soak-the-Rich Taxes Create Happier Nations According to Junk Science Study is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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A new poll shows that, despite attempts by liberal protesters and politicians to inject class resentment into the national debate, Americans, by and large, remain unconcerned by income inequality. Gallup reports that only 2 percent of Americans list the “divide between rich and poor” as the most important economic issue facing the country. Those findings come from an open-ended survey, meaning respondents were not confined to a pre-selected group of responses. Unemployment and the national debt top the list, but all told, a full 17 economic issues rank higher in … More
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I’ve written before about whether California is the Greece of America, in part because of crazy policies such as overpaid bureaucrats and expensive forms of political correctness, And we all know that California has one of the nation’s greediest governments, imposing confiscatory tax rates on a shrinking pool of productive citizens. So it is hardly [...]
Will the Last Job Creator to Leave California Please Turn Off the Lights? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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A new poll from Gallup suggests that President Obama’s class warfare argument and the Occupy Wall Street movement are failing to resonate with Americans — and might actually be backfiring. The new survey reveals that Americans today are less likely to think of the country as divided into “haves” and “have nots” as compared to when Obama ran for office in 2008. That campaign featured the Obama’s “spread the wealth around” rhetoric and followed former Democrat vice presidential candidate John Edwards’ talk of “two Americas.” Americans were equally divided when … More
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
To be blunt, I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But my animosity isn’t because OECD bureaucrats threatened to have me arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail. Instead, I don’t like the Paris-based bureaucracy because it pushes a statist agenda of bigger government. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity [...]
Why Are American Tax Dollars Subsidizing a Paris-Based Bureaucracy so It Can Help the AFL-CIO Push Obama’s Class-Warfare Agenda? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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In an exclusive interview with The Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sharply criticized President Obama for engaging in class warfare and accused him of shifting the focus away from his own failed policies in advance of next year’s election. “My view is he’ll have a hard time convincing Americans he deserves four more years of this,” McConnell said. “There’s nothing he’s done that the American people approve of, so of course, he’s trying to change the subject.” McConnell addressed a range of issues during the interview, from … More
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