Associated Press photojournalist Noah Berger captured this thousand-word image near the Occupy Oakland demonstrations last month. Many Cato@Liberty readers will get it immediately. They can stop reading now. For everyone else, this image perfectly illustrates the ethos of what I call the Church of Universal Coverage. Like everyone who supports a government guarantee of access to medical care, [...]
The Ethos of Universal Coverage is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of …
New Congressional Budget Office Numbers Once Again Show that Modest Spending Restraint Would Eliminate Red Ink 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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By Daniel J. Mitchell
One year ago, I wrote about how the French government was getting unexpected additional revenues following the implementation of lower tax rates.
This is the Laffer Curve in action, and it’s …
The Laffer Curve Works, Even in France is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I don’t blame Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position. I’m mystified, though, why some Republicans are willing to walk into such a trap. If you were playing chess against someone, [...]
Illinois Downgrade: More Evidence that Higher Taxes Make Fiscal Problems Worse is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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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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By Daniel J. Mitchell
I’m not a big fan of Mitt Romney. I hammered him the day before Christmas for being open to a value-added tax, and criticized him in previous posts for his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies. But I also believe [...]
Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Were Right to Utilitize So-Called Tax Havens is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, had a column in the Wall Street Journal that argues government spending isn’t too high. That’s obviously a silly assertion, as I explain here, here, and here, but I want to focus on what he wrote about tax revenues. Here’s the relevant passage [...]
Austan Goolsbee’s Budget Math Is Wrong – More than 100 Percent of Long-Term Fiscal Challenge Is Government Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa voters shared my concern. In a column for today’s [...]
Mitt Romney, the Value-Added Tax, and America’s European Future is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
Last year, I came up with a saying that “Bad Government Policy Begets More Bad Government Policy” and labeled it “Mitchell’s Law” during a bout of narcissism. There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, such as the misguided War on Drugs being a precursor to intrusive, costly, and ineffective money laundering policies. Or how [...]
Obama Has United the World … in Opposition to Bad U.S. Tax Policy is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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