Randall G. Holcombe | Wednesday November 10, 2021 at 11:28 AM PST
How can a plan that proposes to spend trillions of dollars cost nothing? The Orwellian answer from the president is that the plan includes tax increases claimed to match its expenditures.
Randall G. Holcombe | Wednesday November 3, 2021 at 2:05 PM PDT
Many readers will be aware that President Biden has proposed new taxes on the rich to help fund his expenditure plans. As this article explains, a big part of his tax proposal is to tax the unrealized capital gains of people who have assets exceeding $1 billion, which is about 700 people. Despite objections...
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Randall G. Holcombe | Wednesday June 16, 2021 at 8:15 AM PDT
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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Randall G. Holcombe | Tuesday March 16, 2021 at 10:31 AM PDT
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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Randall G. Holcombe | Monday March 30, 2020 at 3:18 PM PDT
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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Randall G. Holcombe | Wednesday November 13, 2019 at 9:11 PM PST
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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William F. Shughart II | Thursday June 13, 2019 at 2:18 PM PDT
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.
Randall G. Holcombe | Monday January 28, 2019 at 10:26 AM PST
Backing down on the wall and blaming it on the Democrats will cost him nothing politically.
Randall G. Holcombe | Friday December 14, 2018 at 12:00 PM PST
President Trump is going back on his campaign promise of making Mexico pay for “the wall”.
Randall G. Holcombe | Wednesday September 5, 2018 at 2:00 PM PDT
With polarization has come intolerance: people abandon their friends and family when they seem to have the wrong political views.
