“Thus, total individual tax receipts ballooned by 70% from 1924 to 1928; and, throughout the 1920s, the share of income taxes paid by earners of over $100,000 a year doubled. Meanwhile, Coolidge held spending constant, allowing him to eliminate nearly a quarter of the national debt and leave it fully 29% smaller than it was when Harding took office.”
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Our biggest challenge is an endless appetite for government spending and an unwillingness and inability to raise taxes enough to support it. The idea that infinite spending can be supported by a small percentage of taxpayer defies basic math and principles of human action. This has caused record deficits and a belief that deficits do not matter and that tradeoffs are no longer required.
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from Jonah Goldberg at National Review, The Unwisdom of Crowds: When Coolidge said, “When you see ten problems rolling down the road, if you don’t do anything, nine of them will roll into a ditch before they get to you.” Again,
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There are simplistic voices in the GOP- not just the religious ones, but the ones that think a balanced budget amendment will solve all of our problems, that the Fed should be abolished and that we should return to a
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When reading and reflecting on the history of our economic and financial condition it appears that we get it wrong more often than we get it right. Just as our history is a history of wars with brief interim periods
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Supply side economics remains controversial and poorly understood both by its critics who think it is just ‘trickle down’ economics: a thinly veiled rationalization to improve the lives of the wealthy at the expense of the poor, and by many
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Interest rates and inflation are at a record low, yet stimulus spending has flooded the markets with currency. The valve that turns money creation into inflation is velocity. The velocity is very low because businesses are reluctant to invest and
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To say that economics is about money is like saying art is about color. Money is a critical element, but it explains very little about the discipline. Many laymen confuse economics with finance. While the subjects substantially overlap, our recent
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More from Roy Fickling in response to a debate that centers on promoting economic growth verses a more fair and even distribution of wealth. For a bit about Roy’s experience see The Great Debate Part I Let’s take socialism to
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The Laffer Curve is considered by its opponents to be a form of ‘voodoo economics’, to use the phrase coined by George H. Bush when he ran against Ronald Reagan before becoming his vice president. But the Laffer Curve is
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