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As you may know, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry is unveiling his proposal for an optional flat tax. ...Of equal importance, Perry is for the first time unveiling his thoughts on Medicare reform. ___ Perry reforms could significantly expand the individual health insurance market. As I’ve written many times, the employer tax exclusion for health insurance is American health care’s original sin: a $300 billion-a-year tax subsidy that is arguably the largest driver of runaway health spending in America. People who get insurance through their employers are that much further removed from shopping for less wasteful, more value-oriented health plans....

Former presidential candidate and current media mogul Steve Forbes said Thursday the Texas Republican governor Rick Perry is likely to capture the Republican presidential nomination. "He was good on taxes and spending in Texas; he was very good on tort reform. Texas has been a cesspool for injury lawyers, and he made major changes - and the proof of it was they all moved to Oklahoma. And obviously I like his ideas on a flat tax. I think he genuinely wants to get the thing done. So it seems to be a good combination," Mr. Forbes said in an interview...

Plunging into the heated debate over taxes among Republican presidential contenders, former US Senate candidate Mitt Romney today is running a series of full-page newspaper ads attacking the 17 percent flat tax proposed by candidate Steve Forbes. "The problem with the Forbes flat tax is that it isn't flat at all -- it's a zero tax on the wealthy and a 17 percent tax on working Americans," Romney said yesterday. "I'm hoping that by running these ads voters will realize the Forbes flat tax is a gimmick, a phony, and not what it pretends to be." The ads note that...

Call this post “the good, the bad, and the ugly” for Rick Perry today to start off a new week for his campaign. He clearly wanted to start with a boost, and had fiscal-conservative icon Steve Forbes on Fox News yesterday with an endorsement of the Texas governor, tied to the upcoming release of Perry’s economic recovery plan based on the Flat Tax that Forbes himself championed in the 1990s: On Tuesday, Rick Perry will unveil his economic plan which includes measures to drastically reform the tax code and lower the corporate tax rate. It will also, he says, provide...

The Rise of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 and other Republican plans show the nation is hungry for a flat tax The nightmare on Main Street -- the federal income tax code -- is ending, which is fantastic news for our beleaguered economy. Dramatically simplifying this monstrosity would unleash a powerful wave of prosperity and job creation. Thankfully in 2012 we will get a mandate to make this happen. Presidential contender Herman Cain vaulted to the head of the Republican pack when he proposed his 9-9-9 plan -- a flat 9% income tax, corporate tax and national sales tax. Even better, Texas...

Please go to the link to see a video interview of Steve Forbes' endorsement of Rick Perry for POTUS and hear a glimpse of what The Perry Plan offers and what that will mean to America.

Two-time presidential candidate Steve Forbes endorsed Texas Gov. Rick Perry's presidential bid — and his campaign's flat tax — in an interview on Fox News. Forbes said Perry's plan will have "a very low rate, with great, generous exemptions for adults and for children," adding it would also lower the corporate tax rate. Businessman Herman Cain has said he is modeling his 9-9-9 plan on Forbes' flat tax principles — though according to a Forbes spokesman, Cain and Forbes have never discussed the plan. Forbes said he believes Perry's plan will be more appealing than Cain's because it does not...

The nightmare on Main Street -- the federal income tax code -- is ending, which is fantastic news for our beleaguered economy. Dramatically simplifying this monstrosity would unleash a powerful wave of prosperity and job creation. Thankfully in 2012 we will get a mandate to make this happen. Presidential contender Herman Cain vaulted to the head of the Republican pack when he proposed his 9-9-9 plan -- a flat 9% income tax, corporate tax and national sales tax. Even better, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will, in a few days, unveil his version of a flat tax, a concept that I...

"Rick Perry -- now coming out with, really embracing Steve Forbes' flat tax idea -- that's going to gain momentum. I look forward to hearing more of the details," she said. "In fact, when I heard that Rick Perry was embracing of Steve Forbes' idea, I went into my garage and dug out an old book from 1999 that Steve Forbes had written. ......Many aspects of it make so much sense - - about the freedom to choose - taxpayer how to file your taxes …..choose a simpler, fairer flat tax…..many of the aspects of it make so much sense."....

[snip] “Any flattening of the tax rates would have distributional consequences across income classes,” wrote CRS economics specialist Jane Gravelle. Of course, to many flat tax proponents, that is part of the point of such a system. Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, the modern father of the flat tax, challenged progressive taxation as inherently unfair. After all, even under a flat tax, the wealthy pay more, as they have more income, noted Friedman. To increase the percentage of their burden is to use the tax system as a means to redistribute income, in his view. “This seems a clear case...

Former presidential candidate and Forbes magazine editor Steve Forbes tells Newsmax that President Obama’s planned economic reforms are “the definition of insanity” — repeating failed policies in the hopes that somehow they will become successful. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview, Forbes also declares that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should have resigned a long time ago, says Obama will be a one-term president, and looks for significant and positive reforms in Washington after the 2012 elections. He also predicts the United States will make an “astonishing” move and return to a gold standard in the next five years, and says...

And another advocate for the only logical outcome out of the disastrous monetary and fiscal catastrophe the US finds itself in emerges in the face of billionaire, and open administration critic, Steve Forbes. From Human Events: "A return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, because that move would help the nation solve a variety of economic, fiscal, and monetary ills. “What seems astonishing today could become conventional wisdom in a short period of time,” Forbes said. Such a move would help to stabilize the value of the dollar, restore confidence...

A return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, because that move would help the nation solve a variety of economic, fiscal, and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview this week with HUMAN EVENTS. “What seems astonishing today could become conventional wisdom in a short period of time,” Forbes said. Such a move would help to stabilize the value of the dollar, restore confidence among foreign investors in U.S. government bonds, and discourage reckless federal spending, the media mogul and former presidential candidate said.  The United States used...

I was watching Forbes on Fox yesterday, and I could have sworn that I heard Steve Forbes say that a potential repeal and replace of Obama Care could be accomplished by Republicans pushing for a repeal and a replacement with a Health Care bill that would be similar to the food stamp program - and it would be set up on a sliding scale basis. This got me to thinking... How could Dems possibly be against this? First of all, it could be set up as being voluntary - no individual mandate. No one is required to sign up for...

For the first time since B.C. Forbes launched his namesake magazine 93 years ago, there will be no members of the founding family involved in the day-day operations of the corporation. The reigning Forbes family scions -- Chairman and CEO Steve Forbes and Chief Operating Officer Tim Forbes -- are exiting management of Forbes Media and turning the firm over to an outsider. Publishing industry veteran Mike Perlis will be president and CEO, a new title at Forbes, as it scrambles to solve the riddle of how to blend its digital and print domains. Steve Forbes, who is also editor-in-chief...

The Energy Crisis is Over! Not because of some humongous breakthrough in alternative energies but because of new ways to access two sources widely used today: oil and natural gas. The recent news story about China's national oil company, Cnooc, purchasing a stake in Chesapeake Energy's Texas shale oil and gas fields and agreeing to pony up most of the capital to develop them underscores what an amazing transformation is taking place in the U.S.' energy picture. The word "revolution" is overused, but it's truly appropriate when applied to these technological breakthroughs: hydraulic fracturing--a.k.a. fracking--and horizontal drilling. With fracking, drillers...

EXCERPTS: It's time to get back to basic economics. Money--both the paper and electronic varieties--is, in and of itself, worth nothing; it has no intrinsic value. It is a means--and a profoundly important one--of enabling people to more easily conduct transactions without having to go through the clumsy and utterly inefficient barter process. For example, when we sell a subscription to Forbes we don't receive in return an endless variety of products (loaves of bread, goat cheese, hot dogs, shoes, blouses and neckties, etc.) or services (two hours of lawn mowing, etc.). We are paid in cash and can then...

Daily Bell: What is your overwhelming political concern these days? Is it financial? Economic? Sociopolitical? What are you most worried about for America? Steve Forbes: Right now my biggest concern is misbegotten ideology and economic thinking from Washington. What we are experiencing now is what you might call a form of soft-core socialism or quasi-Third World socialism where the government doesn't take over industries but, in effect, dominates industries so that you can't do anything without the permission of the federal government. You see it in health care, in finance and in the new so-called financial reform bill. I think...

Here is video of Steve Forbes assessing President Barack Obama and his ideology about as well as I have heard it expressed. Forbes contends Obama is “ideologically-driven,” and that he believes he will be remembered as a “great President” for the things he has already done. He said that in Obama’s “semi-socialist mind,” that’s pretty good work for the first two years. Here is how Forbes summarized Obama’s thinking: “He feels that, in terms of what he’s done, long-term it will make him a great President – put him on Mount Rushmore – change America from a greedy nation to...

It's hard to imagine an economist being provocative, but Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, has managed to do so. In his June 28 New York Times op-ed, Krugman argued that since governments around the world aren't willing to double-down on Keynesian policies meant to stimulate the global economy, the United States and the rest of the world are facing a third depression. But on CNBC's June 28 "The Kudlow Report," host Larry Kudlow asked if Krugman's premise were true, how come none of the measures being applied, which Krugman advocates more of, have failed to have any effect on...