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Trump's Win-Win

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Donald Trump scored another win this weekend, this time in South Carolina. One of the key drivers of the win was his repudiation of globalism and interventionism. Americans are tired of losing their jobs, of wondering if their kids will get jobs, and of seeing their kids fighting futile wars for the elites in Washington. As Pat Buchanan correctly points out: In the GOP nomination race, the chickens of a quarter century of Bush Republicanism have come home to roost. Trump’s triumphs to date are due to his recognition of, and identification with, the Middle American revolt against Bush family … [Read more...]

GOP Candidates: Trumped on Trade

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If you look at the back of your iPhone it reads: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” And there in a nutshell you have a fortune cookie sized explanation of our service/design vs. China’s manufacturing/assembly economy. Which one is more perishable? How long will it take for a call center in India to turn another U.S. service into a commodity? For the U.S. to compete on a global scale she needs to be able to compete in a way that protects her self-interests. Donald Trump gets this as does Pat Buchanan where he explains: Yet, with the exception of Trump, none of the GOP … [Read more...]

Warren Miller: Your Search for Freedom

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If you’re a skier then you know the name Warren Miller—famous for his ground-breaking ski movies shot in some of the most beautiful mountains in the world. I had a chance to meet Mr. Miller, age 91, over the weekend on a ski trip to Montana. He was in the lodge, named after him, signing copies of his soon to be released book. In his book, Miller writes about the first job he had, when he was in fourth grade, stocking shelves at the local grocer. He was able to get a job when, during the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was 25%. But what struck me was not that he had a job, but how he … [Read more...]

How High are Income Tax Rates in Your State?

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The Tax Foundation has released its annual review of income tax rates among the states. There were some big changes in a few states, and overall they were business friendly tax reductions. The Tax Foundation's Nicole Kaeding writes: Several states changed key features of their individual income tax codes between 2015 and 2016. These changes include: Arkansas lowered its top marginal rate from 7 percent to 6.9 percent on income over $35,100.  Also, it adopted a new tax schedule for individuals earning between $21,000 and $75,000 in income. The state now has three tax schedules, with differing … [Read more...]

Trouble Reaching the IRS? Blame Obamacare

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IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told a House Appropriations Committee panel yesterday that the IRS couldn't properly fund taxpayer services because it needed money Congress had allocated for that purpose to instead fund its newly mandated Obamacare workload. Rudy Takala noted in The Washington Examiner that: More than eight million phone calls to the agency's customer service line went unanswered in the last filing season. Koskinen added that the agency hasn't fully funded customer service for the last "three or four years," and that about $900 million had been pulled from cybersecurity. The … [Read more...]

Surprising Progress made in the Fight for Tax Reform

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Here's some pro-growth tax reform that businesses can work with. The Tax Foundation has identified America's best tax reformers of 2015 and honored them with the foundation's Outstanding Achievement in State Tax Reform. This year's honorees are: This year, we honor ten individuals from five states with our award for Outstanding Achievement in State Tax Reform in 2015: Indiana Senator Brandt Hershman (R) Senator Hershman played the lead role in passing reforms that reduced the state’s small business property tax, a tax on machinery and capital, and in the same session eliminated the state’s … [Read more...]

A Race to the Bottom

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What does the former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and senior fellow at the Cato Institute think about the negative interest rate policy by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank? “It won’t work,” writes William Poole in the WSJ. Negative central-bank interest rates will not create growth any more than the Federal Reserve’s near-zero interest rates did in the U.S. And it will divert attention from the structural problems that have plagued growth here, as well as in Europe and Japan, and how these problems can be solved. Part of the impetus behind a … [Read more...]

Debt Disaster: It’s Different this Time

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The only way to get out of a debt disaster without making hard choices about spending cuts or raising extra revenue via taxes, is to ruin your currency through inflation. The problem for politicians though, is that the U.S. dollar is the nicest house in a bad neighborhood, for now anyway. And the U.S. government can’t let that continue forever if they want to avoid an austerity reckoning. Inflation, for the most part, is how we regularly get out of debt as a country. “The post-WWII debt decline was partly due to strong economic growth, but mainly due to the government shafting bondholders … [Read more...]