Yearly Archives: 2017

Archive of posts published in the specified Year

The Libertarian Minority

Nov. 21, 2017

From What Happened to the ‘Libertarian Moment’? by Henry Olsen in National Review Now it is true that the Republican party is overwhelmingly conservative and that most conservatives oppose high taxes and government direction of society. Polls have shown for decades

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An Epidemic of Bad Ideas

Nov. 20, 2017

From Glenn Harlan Reynolds in The USA Today, Social media threat: People learned to survive disease, we can handle Twitter: Likewise, in recent years we’ve gone from an era when ideas spread comparatively slowly, to one in which social media in

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The Trickle Down Mantra

Nov. 18, 2017

by Henry Oliner ‘Trickle down’ is the preferred pejorative of the left towards any tax cut that benefits those who actually pay taxes.  The people who use it sound like idiots to anyone with a basic knowledge of economics.  It

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Self-Devouring Political Correctness

Nov. 17, 2017

by Henry Oliner I confess a certain demented joy in seeing the left eat its own in the avalanche of sexual predatory behavior burying its favorite icons.  When hypocrisy is illuminated, the light can be blinding. Short of actual rape

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Neutered Tax Cuts

Nov. 16, 2017

The drive for tax cuts obscures the greater benefit of tax reform and simplification.  Taxes, however, are only a single component of friction costs. If the purpose of tax reform or tax cuts is to stimulate investment and productive activity

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Understanding Progressives

Nov. 15, 2017

In The World is Never Finished Kevin Williamson addresses the fear of AI on employment . But if we are going to look backward, let’s look back even farther. The belief that the remorseless efficiency of capitalist production will lead

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Promoting Stupidity

Nov. 14, 2017

from Higher Education’s Deeper Sickness by John Ellis at The Wall Street Journal: The imbalance is not only a question of numbers. Well-balanced opposing views act as a corrective for each other: The weaker arguments of one side are pounced

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Trend Illusions

Nov. 13, 2017

by Henry Oliner The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli (highly recommended) is a compilation of biases and psychological barriers to clear and rational thinking. Dobelli warns of “trend gurus who see trends in everything”.  He contends this is

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The Real Loser from Tax Reform

Nov. 10, 2017

From my article in American Thinker, Save the Swamp: I call the difference between the statutory rate and the actual rate the ‘special interest spread’.  It is the difference between the official stated rate and the actual rate paid after

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The Half Life of Populism

Nov. 08, 2017

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, ‘Winning’ Isn’t Winning It is often the case that populism has a short shelf life, after which is ceases to be popular. There is a reason for that: Populism is almost always based on

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The 97% Fraud

Nov. 08, 2017

from National Review and Ian Tuttle, The 97% Solution Surely the most suspicious “97 percent” study was conducted in 2013 by Australian scientist John Cook — author of the 2011 book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand and creator of

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The Function of Political Parties

Nov. 08, 2017

from Bring Back Political Parties by Kevin Williamson at National Review : As it turns out, political parties are — like churches, civic groups, unions, trade groups, lobbyists, pressure groups, and business associations — part of the secret sauce of

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The Progressive Contradiction

Nov. 05, 2017

from Bring Back Political Parties by Kevin Williamson at National Review : The Democratic party had an excellent reason to exclude Senator Bernie Sanders, the same reason the Republican party had to exclude Donald Trump: He wasn’t a member of

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Facts Without Context

Nov. 04, 2017

from The Wall Street Journal, A Deceptive New Report on Climate by Steven Koonin This isn’t the only example of highlighting a recent trend but failing to place it in complete historical context. The report’s executive summary declares that U.S.

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The Special Interest Spread

Nov. 03, 2017

By Henry Oliner The life force of the swamp is the tax system.  It has grown monumentally complex from the thousands of lobbyist swamp creatures and the thousands of special interests who have learned how to thrive in the hazardous

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Regulatory Capture

Nov. 03, 2017

from Gene Epstein’s departing column at Barron’s- Keep Asking the Big Questions: I often paraphrase Winston Churchill on democracy when confronting a critic of the financial markets: They’re the worst way to allocate capital investment, except for all the others. The

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The Dictated Truth

Nov. 02, 2017

from Rupert Darwall in National Review, The Spiral of Silence: One-sided media reporting is a striking feature of the climate and energy debate. “Climate denier” and “tool of malign fossil-fuel interests” are epithets used to delegitimize dissent and quash diversity

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The Lobbying Principle

Nov. 01, 2017

From my article in today’s American Thinker, Save the Swamp: If the per capita cost of government is x, then every deduction, credit, and tax benefit awarded to one party comes at the expense of another.  The main function of

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First Do No Harm

Oct. 31, 2017

from The Wall Street Journal, How Democrats Learned to Love Insurance Companies by Ellysia Finley  (paywall) The cost for the most popular ObamaCare silver plans will increase 37% on average next year. Democrats and insurers are both blaming soaring premiums on

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The Big Questions

Oct. 29, 2017

from Gene Epstein’s departing column at Barron’s- Keep Asking the Big Questions: Compared to what? At what cost? Who pays? And, what happens next? It’s the responsibility of economists to ask and answer questions like these—and the job of economics

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