Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Caring, Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 11th, 2018
Can you hold the idea of “equal pay for equal work” and still be a strong advocate of progressive taxation? Ignore the moral arguments against progressive taxation – which include the political view of the founders warning against the tyranny of the majority … focus on the logical consistency for the moment. The idea of […]
Posted in Socialism on May 8th, 2018
Give them credit for their creativity, again this from Josh Muravchik’s book: Several thousand Party members had been arrested, and many had been executed,” charged with being members of an antiparty conspiracy, a label borrowed from Stalin’s purges. “Supposed conspiritors were persecuted to devilish cruelty,” continues Salisbury. “One group of local Party leaders was paraded […]
Posted in Socialism on May 8th, 2018
Here is Uncle Karl in an 1850 address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (via Josh Muravchik’s work): the workers must counteract … the bourgeois endeavors to allay the storm, and must compel the democrats to carry out their present terrorist phrases. Their actions must be so aimed as to prevent the direct […]
Posted in Socialism on May 8th, 2018
It is thought that if only artificial intelligence proceeds apace, and computing power increases apace, that the knowledge and information demands imposed by the economic problem could conceivably be dealt with, and then socialist central planning could succeed. It is thought that if only men were angels, then we could run an economy without having […]
Posted in Disingenuous, Dynamism - Not, Economic Illiteracy, Government Gone Wild, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Taxation on Dec 11th, 2017
As you ponder the inane debates about tax “reform” (i.e. deck chairs and symbolism), suppose you take the work of Martin Feldstein seriously. He has previously estimated that the dead weight loss in an economy due to taxation would be up to 30% of the size of the tax take. Now, I suspect the direct […]
Posted in Taxation on Oct 26th, 2017
Are Tyler and his comment threads suggesting that once a dollar leaves the US, it never makes its way back? Please explain how, absent a corporate income tax, the US is going to effectively tax foreign investors, if they invest via a US or foreign corporation. This is a major practical problem of eliminating the corporate […]
Posted in Disingenuous, If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 21st, 2017
Were I to run for a serious elected office, among my policy positions would include: (1) Eliminate all favorable employer tax treatments for health insurance. In other words, raise the taxes employees and employers pay on the income they pay their workers. The obvious reason to do this, and even the hated GWB proposed it […]
Posted in trade on Aug 16th, 2017
Here is Noah Smith on trade, The development of these new models is good news for the economics profession. It means that mainstream economists are diversifying their approaches, supplementing their old simple models with new ones that recognize the fantastic complexity of the real-world economy You mean, like Hayek and most real economists? Maybe the […]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Government Thuggery, Socialism on May 1st, 2017
On this much celebrated day around the world, I repost my mourning for the hundreds of millions that have been brutally tortured, maimed, and murdered in the name of “the social good” and “brotherhood.” Shame on them. And shame on us for not keeping these lesson at the fore. Of course, the trash I get […]
Posted in Socialism on Mar 30th, 2017
HT to AT
