Economics

Earlier this month, President Clinton vetoed legislation to end the marriage penalty in the federal tax code, charging that the Republican-backed bill was “poorly targeted toward delivering marriage penalty relief.” News reports filed by the Associated Press (AP) backed the President’s assertion, claiming that only some married couples in America are penalized by the current tax code. Many other couples, Read More ›

Vice President Gore keeps telling us how proud he is that he voted against the Reagan tax rate reductions in 1981. This is a curious boast for a politician to make since, a year after the tax cuts went into effect, inflation and unemployment fell sharply and the economy began to grow very rapidly. Most observers credit the Reagan tax Read More ›

C-SPAN has just released its rankings of American presidents. Several dozen notable historians and professional observers of the presidency were surveyed and asked to rank the presidents in 10 different categories. Most of the categories are somewhat subjective, such as “moral authority” and “pursued equal justice for all.” One category, however, “economic management,” can be analyzed empirically. Numbers are available Read More ›

What do the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the global warming treaty in Kyoto, and the Social Security “crisis” of demand-side Keynesian economics have in common, apart from a convergence of K’s? You can even add Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Answer: They all reflect a belief in a zero-sum world. The concept of a zero-sum system originated in a branch of Read More ›

Published on May 1, 1991, Centesimus Annus returns to the themes of a lapidary encyclical of 100 years before, Rerum Novarum, which refuted Marxism long before it had refracted into a global plague of tyranny and murder. The critique of socialism, however, did not signify an affirmation of capitalism. The `new things’ to which the Pope devoted his attention more Read More ›

Death and taxes are known as life’s certainties. Far less common, but much more enjoyable to contemplate, is the death of a tax.  In fact, a little-known technology may be about to accomplish what generations of Americans have joked and dreamed about — and both the new Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer and his predecessor, Chairman Sam Gibbons, Read More ›