President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have convinced the other G-7 countries to implement a 15% minimum global corporate tax rate. The argument in favor is that some countries (the linked article names Ireland) are establishing themselves as tax havens–lowering their tax rates to attract businesses from higher-tax countries. Another way to view...
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Last week President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, which among other things will provide direct payments of $1,400 to many Americans, and extend a financial supplement to unemployment payments. It’s difficult to comprehend numbers as big as $1.9 trillion, but here are some ways to think about it. The US population...
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The obvious answer to the question in my title–that unemployment is rising because of the COVID-19 pandemic–is not quite correct. The virus is not causing unemployment to rise. The government’s response to the virus is causing unemployment to rise. I won’t offer an opinion on whether the government response, overall, goes too far or...
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When President Grover Cleveland tried to implement an income tax in 1894, the Supreme Court declared it to be unconstitutional because it violated Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which says taxes must be levied in proportion to a state’s population. In response, the supporters of income taxation passed the Sixteenth Amendment, ratified...
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Selective excise taxes may raise revenue for the public sector by targeting the consumption of things that elites disdain, but they do not save millions of lives.

Backing down on the wall and blaming it on the Democrats will cost him nothing politically.

President Trump is going back on his campaign promise of making Mexico pay for “the wall”.

With polarization has come intolerance: people abandon their friends and family when they seem to have the wrong political views.

Special interest politics is behind the Supreme Court’s decision.

Blight, the Yale historian, is hardly unique in his misrepresentation of the classical liberal tradition.