World’s Strangest Tax Laws
World’s Strangest Tax Laws according to Foreign Policy Magazine: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/26/the_worlds_strangest_tax_laws?page=full I’m guessing they don’t even come close to...
View ArticleOn tax day, raise a glass to the unborn
This year—and predictably, most years around April 15—a number of stories popped up on the topic of who pays the taxes (or more correctly, given the laziness of the media, the same story reprinted with...
View ArticleAn Oversized Hero
In an era when many Republicans are trying to gain political traction by complaining that Democrats want to cut Medicare, it warms my soul to see a blue-state Republican, Gov. Chris Christie, actually...
View ArticleThe Gathering Storm of Class Warfare in Europe – Marcus Cole in Hamburg, Germany
by Marcus Cole. This week, as I and hundreds of other travelers in Europe remain stranded under clear blue skies full of invisible volcanic ash, a different, more ominous cloud is gathering all over...
View ArticleMonday Morning with Marx
For those who followed the neo-Marxist debates on state theory in the 1970s (or were forced to learn about them by one’s professors), one of the more interesting contributions came from James...
View ArticleIs Obama Anti-Business?
Albert R. Hunt defends the administration against the charge made by Verizon chairman Ivan Seidenberg. (Part of the reason for Seidenberg’s charge is the FCC’s aggressive push to regulate the Internet...
View ArticleBusiness versus the State: the World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report has been released. You can read a summary in the Washington Post or go directly to download the report and the fascinating data tables here. As...
View ArticleThe Carbon Tax and Fiscal Responsibility
I was ever so briefly at a conference on pricing carbon this weekend at Wesleyan (I was a moderator for a session). The panelists were committed to the same goal (reduced CO2 emissions) so the...
View ArticleThe New Obamanomics?
Interesting and encouraging suggestions in the news today that President Obama wants to embark on significant tax reforms largely along the lines recommended by the Commission on Fiscal Responsibility...
View ArticleMore Unionized States Have Higher Taxes
One of the purposes of “right to work” legislation, currently being debated in Indiana, New Hampshire, and other states, is to reduce the percentage of the workforce covered by collective bargaining...
View ArticleUnionization and Taxes, Part Two
At The Monkey Cage, Andrew Gelman takes issue with my post on union density and tax collections by state. I argued that states with higher percentages of workers covered by collective-bargaining...
View ArticleWhat Caused Recent Tax Increases at the State Level?
The recent recession cut deeply into state treasuries, forcing legislatures to raise taxes or cut spending or both to eliminate budget deficits. It is interesting to note which states opted for big tax...
View ArticleA Deficit-Neutral Plan to Slash Unemployment
While the U.S. economy has been officially out of recession for a while and growing at a decent clip (1.8% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter of this year, 3.1% in the last...
View ArticleCEOs vs. Small Business Owners on Which Policies Make for a Business-Friendly...
Which public policies make an economy better for business? One way to answer this question is to ask businesspeople. Two recent surveys ask businesspeople to rank the American states on their...
View Article“Suits and Sandals”: Different Freedom Indices for Different Folks
This post will illustrate how users can customize the freedom index according to their own judgments about how various policies affect freedom. In particular, it will show how the weighting for tax...
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