Monthly Archives: November 2012

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

A Tax Increase Reader

There are a lot of sound bites and meaningless phrases used to cover the debate on fiscal reform.  “Fiscal Reform” means cutting expenses for some, increasing taxes for other.  I think I will scream if I hear the phrase ‘fiscal

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Mastering the Message and the Method

Erick Erickson writes in Red State The Incestuous Bleeding of the Republican Party, 11/28/12.  It is a thoroughly researched piece on how the GOP is run by consultants who get paid a fortune and perform very poorly.  This point is also made

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Lessons Unlearned

In The Telegraph, Two-thirds of millionaires left Britain to avoid 50p tax rate by Robert Winnett, 11/27/12 Excerpt: In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and

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Jobs and Taxes

“Suppose I hire you to repair my computer. The job is worth $200 to me and doing the job is worth $200 to you. The transaction will occur because we have a meeting of the mind. Now suppose there’s the

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Tax More, Get Less

From The Great 2012 Cashout in the Wall Street Journal, 11/28/12 Excerpts: It’s also a good bet that some of the recent stock market volatility is due to investors seeking to realize capital gains at today’s 15% tax rate, before

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Krugman’s Selective Nostalgia

In The New York Times, Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman writes theTwinkie Manifesto, 11/18/12. In the article Krugman noted how we had strong economic growth in the 1950’s even with much higher tax rates and much stronger trade unions. But

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Regressive Marginal Tax Rates

In the current debate of how best to increase revenues it is important to distinguish between marginal taxes and effective taxes.  Marginal taxes are the taxes you pay on an incremental amount of income.  If the marginal tax rate is

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“Access to a waiting list is not access to health care”

The premise of the very need for health care reform of the nature of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is based on flawed analysis and myths. Myth #1 Access to health insurance is synonymous to access to health care. Plenty of

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The Launching of Surprises

George Gilder writes Unleash the Mind in The National Review.  It is from his soon to be released update of his classic Wealth and Poverty. All progress comes from the creative minority. Under capitalism, wealth is less a stock of

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Who Are the Republicans?

While we think we have a two party system there are really several different political interests and philosophies.  The two parties are merely structures that allows for a collation of these interests to unite to attain political power.   There are

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Kennedy Vs Krugman

 In The New York Times, Nobel prize winning fool (a growing breed) Paul Krugman writes the Twinkie Manifesto, 11/18/12. In the article Krugman suggests we return to the tax rates of the 1950 when the highest bracket was 91% and

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Modern Marketing and Political Victory

Gordon Crovitz writes Obama’s ‘Big Data’ Victory in The Wall Street Journal, 11/18/12 Excerpt: Campaign manager Jim Messina pledged to “measure every single thing in this campaign” and built an analytics department five times the size of the 2008 effort.

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Blind Intellect

Paul Johnson writes Men Blinded By Their Brains in the November 19, 2012 issue of Forbes Excerpt Of course, intellectuals, whom I define as those who think ideas are more important than people, are notoriously bad at seeing the ordinary

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Government Power and Individual Liberty

Michael Barone write in The National Review, Two Americas, 11/7/12 Excerpt: One America tends to be traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs, and suspicious of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly religious, less charitable, skeptical

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A Better Diagnosis of the Health Care Problem

Greedy insurance companies, health care providers, pharmaceutical companies, and doctors in 10,000 square foot mansions make convenient targets for the escalating health care costs.  One could also fault intrusive government regulations and mandates and a few may actually credit the

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Recent Rebel Yid Out Takes

Becoming More Dependent on the Wealthy The irony is that the more progressive our taxes become the more the government is dependent on the wealthy to fund their programs, and the more sensitive our tax revenues and the economy become

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Propping Up the Past in the Name of Progress

The problem of the United States comes not chiefly from its liabilities, serious though they are, but from the suffocating webs of government regulations and subsidies, pettifoggery (a quarrel about petty points)  and litigation that is devaluing the the assets

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Becoming More Dependent on the Wealthy

Stephen Moore traces a history of tax RATE changes in the 20th Century in Why Lower Tax Rates Are Good for Everyone in The Wall Street Journal. Excerpt: The country needs an economy that will create more of the “millionaires and

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Institutionalizing the Problem

Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog Sultan Knish, The Limits of Government Power, 10/14/12 Excerpts: Governments begin by seeking depth of control and end by losing control over the depths of their own bureaucracy which not only becomes incapable of managing

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Encouraging Overconsumption

Steven Landsburg writes in The Wall Street Journal How the Death Tax Hurts the Poor, 10/29/11. Excerpt:

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