Today, we continue to examine the effects of corporate income taxes on investment. Dr. Larry Summers, a Harvard professor and currently an economic adviser to President Obama, recently wrote about this. (Summers has announced he will return to Harvard at the end of the year.) In 2009, he published an article with Dr. James Hines of the University of Michigan. Here’s their review of the effects of […]
MNFMI
Is cutting corporate income tax rates a “failed strategy”?
The Minnesota Free Market will be publishing a series of short commentaries I wrote, examining the effects of the corporate income tax, using some academic journals as the jumping-off point. The first one came out today.
Lessons in economics from the North Shore
Can you learn a lesson in economics by going on vacation? On March 18 through 22, I spent some time at a convention on the North Shore, held for people who write about skiing, snowboarding and winter generally to talk about their work, swap stories, and ski and snowboard at Lutsen Mountains. Over the next few weeks I’ll be offering up some observations I gleaned […]
Minnesota teacher union sees recession as opportunity to weaken charter schools
President Obama made news last week for trumpeting charter schools. He called for states that have caps on the number of charter schools to lift them, arguing that placing a limit “isn’t good for our children,our economy or our country.” While the head of the Democratic Party was praising charter schools, some of his DFL counterparts in Saint Paul were trying to bury them. First […]
Government unlimited, society constrained
President Obama and Congress are keen to inflict many changes on this country, changes that will inflict a lot of damage. Aside from the particulars, the most significant problem with the Obama agenda is that it is a full-frontal assault on the principle of subsidiarity. Made most famous in Rerum Novarum, an encyclical published by Pope Leo III in 1891, subsidiarity is a defense against […]
Public school children are “captured”
Large, bureaucratic organizations, especially government agencies, are well known for using words to shape public perceptions and obscure their own failures. (George Orwell’s “1984” was simply an extreme literary example.) I realized this truth again when I was reading one of the local newspapers published in Dakota County, Minnesota. Various editions of the newspaper “This Week” published an article that could have come straight from […]
Taxes are not charitable contributions
Advocates of placing more and more of our incomes and lives under the control of government sometimes say that those of us who favor cutting down the size and burden of government are selfish. By contrast, proposing a significant role for government is a sign of altruism and charity. In this Christmas season, it’s important to remember just what “charity” is. Charity is when you […]
Our Healthcare future: Affordability and access or regulation and rationing
In Minnesota as well as in Washington, DC, there’s a push for a government takeover of health care. People who value freedom are right to warn of the horrors of single-payer systems in Britain, Canada and elsewhere. But they should also offer a positive prescription for change. One prescription is the Cato Handbook for Policymakers, available at the Cato web site (www.cato.org). While the handbook […]
Whose Children Are They?
Recently a member of the Minnesota Legislature–I forget who, and it’s not really important–asserted that the state needs a booster-seat law. It’s “to protect our children,” you see. The Star-Tribune editorialized that substituting political judgment for parental judgment is “a small price to pay to protect our kids.” Excuse me, but whose kids are we talking about? One of my favorite comedy sketches of all […]
Who does government really–and inevitably–work for?
A while ago,I attended a panel discussion on the life of John Brandl, held at the University of Minnesota and cosponsored by the Minnesota Free Market Institute. Among the several points I could mention from that 90-minute event, I’ll stick with one. During the discussion, one of the panelists said something like this: “We need to make government works for the people who need it […]