Tax rates affect the tax base in two ways: Higher rates decrease incentives to generate income and also divert income and investment to less productive tax shelters. With higher rates, the tax base is smaller than it would otherwise be.
The average U.S. real GDP growth rate from 1987-2000 was 3.65 percent. From 2001-2014, it was 1.64 percent. What event divides these two equal time periods? The 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Want to get a group of retirees riled up? Tell them their Social Security benefits are welfare benefits.
Public finance economists go crazy thinking about federal entitlements. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for most of the entitlement spending, although Obamacare looms as a future contender.
Let domestic oil producers sell at the best price they can.
When everybody “just knows” something is true, it’s time to get a little nervous. That’s when we suspend skepticism and uncritically accept the assertion.
if Congress refuses to raise the debt limit, the executive branch always wins the PR war.
When conspicuous consumption ceases to amuse, what do the rich do? They build monuments to themselves. The very rich want to see their names on activities that promote, or at least appear to promote, the well-being of others.
Does Indiana face a shortage of schoolteachers? You’d certainly think so from news stories showing an 18-percent decline in new teacher licenses issued over the past five years.
The officers of the Liberty Fund say the Libertarian-leaning group’s new building on Meridian Street in Carmel is meant to strengthen its roots in the community.
Near-zero interest rates were supposed to pep up the economy. Six years and 10 months later, economic growth has been positive, but anemic. The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent, but labor force participation rates are at record lows and full-time jobs are hard to find.
Prices set below what a free-exchange market would determine result in shortages. Above-market prices produce unsold piles of surpluses.
A much more plausible explanation is, there was a mechanical breakdown at BP’s Whiting refinery.
A funny thing happened on our way to the gas station last week. We’d heard world oil prices were tanking. We expected our fill-up to be a bargain. But to our dismay, retail gasoline prices had spiked to nearly $3 a gallon. It turns out the BP refinery in Whiting had been partially shut down for […]
Americans are understandably upset with years of sluggish U.S. economic performance. We don’t blame the political class for trying to blame it on someone else, preferably a foreign someone else. Don’t fall for it.
We offer one simple economic observation: Reductions in CO2 emissions come at an economic cost today, while the benefits accrue in the future.
The most recent Report of the Social Security Administration projects that, in 2020, interest earnings will not be enough to cover Social Security’s deficit, so the Social Security Trust Fund’s balance will begin to decline. It is expected the balance will be zero sometime in 2034.
Fans of goosing the minimum wage should acknowledge that raising the price of labor by legislative fiat costs jobs.
The reserve balances are there for one reason: to cushion against unforeseen shocks that would cause dramatic reductions in public services or tax increases nobody really wants.
China is a mosaic of different “economies”—part subsistence agriculture, part controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, and only part more or less “capitalistic”. The State still calls far too many of the shots.
