Taxes and Spending

The Alternative Minimum Tax was supposed to soak the rich. Predictably, it is now poised to soak huge swaths of the middle class.

Back when I was an undergrad, I got an A in Economics 101, and a formal request for me to major in economics. The course was both easy and straightforward, and I was under the impression that a solid knowledge of how the economy worked was soon to be in my grasp.

Then I stumbled onto a copy of Henry Hazlitt's The Failure of the New Economics, and I got a real shock.

Tax cuts are always a joy. But let's dispense with the fiction that they constitute an economic stimulus. For that, we need an increase of savings and dramatic spending cuts.

Bush's tax cut means that a small amount of money will escape the clutches of our ruling class, but it is no great triumph for our liberty or our wallets.

While some taxes are worse than others, there is no good tax. All taxes distort production, depress economic growth, and punish producers and consumers. It's also true that different kinds of taxes affect production and punish people in different ways.

Karen De Coster takes apart the very strange claim, made by Patricia Ireland of NOW, that tax cuts are bad for women.

Will the free market underproduce roads? Not a chance. Chris Westley explains how government intervention causes traffic congestion. 

History is never as clear-cut as it is taught in public schools, but in this instance, something very strange is afoot. Tibor Machan discusses new revelations on nineteenth-century American history. 

In choosing whether tax cuts should be big or small, will the U.S. follow the path of Germany's Ludwig Erhard or of the socialists in Britain? Gregory Bresiger explains what's at issue.