One's chance of winning a top prize in one of the rigged state lotteries is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from zero. In California's feverish drive to take more money from a citizenry that is already overtaxed, officials are looking for an even better bet for the state: selling tickets to games that have already been decided.
When the AMT began, those with a $20,000-a-year or less income in 1979 were exempted. That would mean that, correcting for the inflation, today the AMT exemption should be about $54,000 for married couples filing jointly and $41,000 single filers. It isn’t. Congress, which in its wisdom never forgets to raise its own salaries, has moved slowly in raising the AMT exemption.
Now that the economy is in a slump, many of the workers who gave up their welfare benefits are finding themselves without a job. Many of the industries that were most likely to hire former welfare recipients have been those worst affected by the recession. These workers are finding that they have no legal right to a resumption of welfare payments because the disgraceful Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was abolished.
The fact that Carlo Ponzi's investment scheme lasted less than a year--while the government's "Ponzi scheme" has lasted, through good times and bad, for more than half a century--only suggests that Ponzi should have applied his talents as a politician, where he could've fleeced his victims legally.
So, knock down the Empire State Building and we can further increase our economic output. Of course Krugman would not want just New York City's economy to grow, so we should also knock down the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Hancock Building in Boston. If this does not revive the economy, we better start leveling entire cities; surely that will bring economic prosperity.
AmeriCorps is little more than social work tinged with messianic delusions. Citizens should no longer be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes each year for a bunch of photo opportunities for politicians and do-gooders.
Forest industry and other private timberland owners increasingly are burdened by environmental and other government regulations that in many cases constitute de facto seizures of their property rights.
If the military was all it took to wipe out terrorists, writes Robert Blackstock, Israel would have long ago shut down the PLO, and Britain would have already made Northern Ireland a vacation mecca.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says it wants to eliminate tax havens because their practices are harmful, if not criminal. What it really wants is to eliminate tax competition.
The Bush administration's new duty on Canadian softwood lumber imports could dynamite the nation's housing.
