This graphic from the CBO, via AEIdeas, says it all, even if it is from 2011 (does anyone think things have changed materially in the last three years?).
Taxes—Who Pays Them?
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Category Archives: Economics
Taxing Europe
Speaking at a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies in Brisbane, the former prime minister of Luxembourg defended his position, saying a lack of cooperation between European Union member states created a system where “very low taxation of companies” was legal. “Things of that kind could happen because of the divergency between national tax legislation,” he said.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that like he thought low taxes were a bad thing. Leaving more money in the hands of the folks who earned it, instead of transferring it to Government Know Betters is a bad thing.
Contra our own President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party, I don’t want us to be more like Europe.
What’s next for ObamaCare?
That’s the title of a Jim Angle article on Fox News.com. RTWT, but what interests me are a couple of comments he quoted in his piece.
The first comment is this one, by John Goodman, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute:
[I]if you repeal it, you’re going to have to replace it with something. And repeal and replace is just another way of saying we’re going to change ObamaCare into something different and better.
Of course. Free market solutions would work. “Change Obamacare” into…? Sure, if keeping the name proves tactically sound, that’s fine. Calling white black in order to get the black replaced with something better may be politically necessary, but it still won’t be black anymore. I’d prefer a better collection of names for the collection of smaller policies (rather than one large policy) that should replace this monstrosity, but that can come later.
Then there’s this bigger bit of nonsense from Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center:
[Y]ou need to not only say you’re against the ACA…, but you’re going to need to have a replacement plan to show people you have a better way of providing people with health insurance coverage.
That’s partly right. The upcoming Republican Congress does need to have a replacement plan. However, it’s not government’s job to “provid[e] people with health insurance coverage.” It’s the job of the market place and the private citizens interacting in it to provide people with the coverage they want—including no coverage at all. Government has no role in this whatsoever beyond its role of ensuring an honest market place.
Another Installment of the Obama Recovery
The number of part-time workers who’d rather work full time remains heavily depressed. Here are some numbers, via Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal.
- 3 million full-time workers hired just this year, but the number of full-time workers is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007
- number of workers who are part time for economic reasons is 4.5% of the civilian workforce, down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession
Yeah, we’re doing wonderfully well. Sure.
Why Is This Bad?
Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Friday the central bank could trigger some financial turbulence when it starts raising short-term interest rates from near zero, where they have been pinned for six years.
The Fed will try to limit such volatility by communicating its interest rate plans clearly, Ms Yellen said….
She’s nominally talking about the volatility arising from the Fed not being entirely clear about its market moves monetary policy strategy in order to avoid “disrupting” financial markets, but she’s really talking about volatility throughout our economy, not only the financial markets.
Democracies, especially republican democracies, are at their noisiest when they’re at their most robust. So, too, are economies at their freest and most robust when they’re at their noisiest. It is, after all, the creative destruction of a free market that creates the broadest opportunity and the broadest prosperity. It is exactly that creative destruction that is stifled by a government that sits on and suppresses market volatility.