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News
Recent posts and articles from IGEG fellows, advisers, experts and scholars.
A Carbon Tax Would Make No Sense Attempting to regulate carbon dioxide is folly
All too many bad ideas get endlessly recycled — the carbon tax is one of them. A carbon tax could be a tax on coal, oil and gas carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants and other sources. Do you know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere? It is a little less...
Should the Constitution Be Amended? Mark Levin’s best-seller could reverse the rise of ‘soft tyranny’
What amendments to the U.S. Constitution, if any, would you like to see? The widespread belief is that the American constitutional republic, if not actually broken, is in a state of disrepair. In his new, best-selling book, “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the...
Saving Consumers from Lower Prices Protectionist policies do more harm than good
Why does the Obama administration claim it wants you to pay less for your airline ticket, but more for the shrimp you buy? One reason the economy keeps stumbling along is that businessmen, consumers and taxpayers are having a hard time planning because of endlessly...
Surprise Among the Spendthrift Nations America and the West lead the way to the bottom of the list
The good news is that there are more countries managing their economies in a fiscally responsible way than there were two years ago. Fiscally responsible means keeping average annual deficits less than average annual economic-growth rates, keeping net debt from...
Protecting the Wrong People The government mobilizes to defeat the President’s enemies, not the Nation’s
The Obama administration has a penchant for not safeguarding agents of the U.S. government that it ought to protect, while at the same time protecting errant civil servants, some of whom belong in jail. Almost everyone is now aware of the U.S. government’s failure to...
Making Regulations That Do More Harm Than Good Governments forget to check the end result of their rules
Terrorists, money launderers, drug dealers and tax evaders use automobiles, airplanes, telephones, computers, banks and countless other goods and services that we all use. Yet all too many government policymakers think that if we make these things very difficult to...
The Last Days of the IRS Confiscatory government leads to tax resistance
There has been much discussion about which banks and other financial institutions are "too big to fail." In reality, no institution is too big to fail, including any private company or political entity, whether it is Detroit or the former Soviet Union. The more...
Obama’s Bad News for Blacks Obamacare will hurt most those with the least
If you knew nothing else about President Obama other than looking at the data, you might conclude that he was insensitive to blacks, given that they have done far worse economically under his administration than Hispanics or whites. What is striking is that the...
How to Make Government Behave Send a polite letter demanding to talk to a real person
Most people who work in government have no problem giving their real names and telling you what they do, but there are exceptions. Those who are engaged in real undercover work for government intelligence agencies or certain law enforcement agencies have a legitimate...
Flat Tax? Sales Tax? Value-Added Tax? The gasoline tax, charging the user as far as he goes, may be the perfect tax
What type of tax reform do you want? Simplification of the existing progressive income tax system? A flat tax? A sales tax? A value-added tax? Tax professionals, economists, elected officials and others heatedly debate the pros and cons of each. However, it is...
Approaching Economic Stall Speed Many nations are on the verge of shrinking economies
Stall speed is the airspeed at which an aircraft stops producing lift. Unless immediate corrective action is taken, such as reducing the wing’s angle of attack or the weight of the aircraft, the results are not likely to be good. An economy can hit “stall speed” when...
A Tale of Two Economies Chile has employed free-market principles to outperform Eecuador
Chile and Ecuador provide an almost perfect test case of competing economic visions. Back in 1980, Ecuador had a slightly higher per capita income than Chile. In the past 33 years, Ecuador has increased its real per capita income a little more than threefold, but...
Evolutionary Anomalies in Our Midst Some have developed the means to achieve; others work at the IRS
It is odd to be on a small volcanic island on the equator in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles west of Ecuador, for a meeting of economists and a few other academics and think-tank types. One of the lesser purposes of the meeting is to discuss what we can learn from...
Tyranny of the Taxers G-8 summit needs more strong drink
There is an all-too-common tendency for humans (particularly members of the political class) to blame or scapegoat others when they bungle their jobs. We are now being treated to the meeting of the Group of Eight — where the "leaders" of eight major countries are...
IRS Troubles Go Global Demands for tax records are drying up foreign investment in the U.S.
The problem of Internal Revenue Service misbehavior is not confined to its actions in the United States, but extends to its dealings with foreign individuals, institutions and countries. All sovereign nations have just as much right to create their own tax laws and...
From Captive Nations to Free Markets Once unleashed, former basket cases have swiftly evolved
Vilnius seems very much like a normal European city these days, as do the capitals of the other Eastern and Central European countries. In retrospect, this simple fact is remarkable, because a mere quarter-century ago Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were part of the...
From Captive Nations to Free Markets Once unleashed, former basket cases have swiftly evolved
Vilnius seems very much like a normal European city these days, as do the capitals of the other Eastern and Central European countries. In retrospect, this simple fact is remarkable, because a mere quarter-century ago Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were part of the...
Preserving Their Monopoly on Monopoly Money The Feds stamp out innovative currencies that threaten their financial control
"The need to slough off the outworn old to make possible the productive new is universal. It is reasonably certain that we would still have stagecoaches — nationalized to be sure, heavily subsidized and with a fantastic research program to 'retain the horse' — had...