Taxes and Spending

While President Trump rails against US trade deficits, he forgets that they are due to the fact that the US dollar is the world‘s reserve currency. This, in turn, encourages deficit spending and a bloated national debt.

Elon Musk has found out the hard way that one can ferret out hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress wastes, but fail in getting its members to stop wasteful spending. Jim Bovard learned that hard lesson 30 years ago.

President Trump‘s so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is more of the same: big and bloated. It adds billions to the federal deficit and does nothing to deal with the government‘s ruinous debt. Naturally, the Republicans support it.

The Trump administration has pursued a high tariff policy, reversing the movement to lower trade barriers around the world. The justification for this policy is the presence of trade deficits with other nations. However, what if  US trade deficits don't matter?

There are numerous critics of free markets. However, all of those critics also are consumers and they gladly depend upon free markets to satisfy their needs.

Forbes called this explosive loan situation, a “perfect storm…of heavier debt loads, higher payments, and an unforgiving economy.”

Forbes called this explosive loan situation, a “perfect storm…of heavier debt loads, higher payments, and an unforgiving economy.”

Like presidents before him, Donald Trump is using the IRS as a weapon against organizations he doesn‘t like. Richard Nixon did the same thing—and it helped bring down his presidency.

In the name of fighting income inequality, pundits in the UK and US are calling for wealth taxes as magic bullets that will restore an imaginary state of income equality that never existed in the first place. It is time to abandon this idea for good.

In the world of private enterprise, business owners pay attention to costs already incurred that cannot be recovered, also known as “sunk costs.” Government officials, however, see sunk costs as an incentive to promote public projects where costs clearly outweigh benefits.