Daily Archives: November 18, 2011
The nation’s highest marginal tax rate revealed
Discussions of tax proportionality along income lines are not complete without an address of the various credits and welfare payments that offset them. Since these handouts decline as one’s income rises, the rate of marginal taxation is the combination of the increased taxes and the forgone benefits. Sven Larson of the Wyoming Liberty Group, aContinue Reading
Why you hold self-evident truths as self-evident; q.v., the EU vs. water
To cut to the chase: because doing otherwise is a great waste of time and money, as well as fraught with the risk of shackling oneself risibly to the quantitative fallacy. Allow me to quote from David Hackett Fischer’s Historical Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (Harper Colophon, 1970): There is an epigram, perhapsContinue Reading
The quiet Beatle’s religious life
Andrew Ferguson offers Weekly Standard readers a fascinating article about George Harrison, a hedonistic rock star with an uncharacteristically un-rock’n’roll approach to the afterworld: Critics called Harrison “preachy,” and with some cause. I remember attending a concert in the only American solo tour he ever did, in 1974, in Long Beach, California. His voice wasContinue Reading
Murdock recommends a Puerto Rican vacation for top Washington leaders
Why does Deroy Murdock believe President Obama and members of the congressional “Supercommittee” might benefit from a trip to a warmer climate? Because of the work of Puerto Rico’s Republican governor, Luis Fortuño. Fortuño was inaugurated on January 2, 2009, just 18 days before Obama. Since then, these two officials have marched in opposite directions,Continue Reading
Krauthammer examines the president’s ‘crude ploy’
Charles Krauthammer‘s latest column dissects President Obama’s approach to the Keystone XL pipeline. [W]hat do you do when you say you can, but, it turns out, you can’t? Blame the other guy. Charge the Republicans with making governing impossible. Never mind that you had control of the Congress for two-thirds of your current tenure. It’sContinue Reading
The Washington “shell game” continues
If you believe that the failure of the supercommittee means the end of life as we know it, as the MSM wants us to believe, you need to read this column by George Will. Sensible people who remember the last grand budget bargain will be dry-eyed about not having another now. Although only 21 ofContinue Reading
Occupy Wii
Blogger Joey Stansbury discovered this “tale of struggle” from Occupy Raleigh: It has cost me substantial money in gas going back and forth to the occupation. So much so that part of my reduced schedule is budgetary, not just about my health. Until recently when I started pulling back a little, I had no freeContinue Reading
The connection between economic freedom and a nation’s wealth and health
In little more than a decade, the United States has dropped from No. 3 to No. 10 in rankings of economic freedom. That decline is likely to impact the nation’s health and wealth in the future. Southern Methodist University economist Robert Lawson discussed the Economic Freedom of the World Index during a presentation Thursday forContinue Reading