Free Republic

No one is paying much attention, but Washington is building up a vast new multitrillion-dollar welfare class: corporate America. Deep inside President Joe Biden's budget are hundreds of billions of dollars of loans, grants and loan guarantees for corporate America. This Aid to Dependent Corporations is most prevalent in the area of renewable energy. Despite more than $100 billion already doled out to wind and solar companies over the past 30 years, the Biden plan would enrich often-very wealthy investors in solar and wind plants with another $100 to $200 billion in the president's green energy scheme. For the past...

The recent ProPublica article claiming new insights into how the wealthy pay little or no income taxes has generated predictable, but uninformed, outrage among those who seek to make the rich pay their so-called “fair share.” But the ProPublica analysis contains logic errors and ignores important concepts built into the tax code. ProPublica disingenuously compares current taxes paid to income that includes unrealized gains without considering the fact that eventually those gains will be taxed. There is a difference between deferring taxes and eliminating taxes. A more honest analysis would factor in the present value of the taxes that will...

Elizabeth Warren has again proposed a federal wealth tax. The reality that the Supreme Court could declare a federal wealth tax to be unconstitutional is apparently irrelevant to Senator Warren. The possibility of a deep negative economic consequence to the United States as the result of a wealth tax is apparently irrelevant to Senator Warren. The probability that the stock market would be slaughtered by wealthy investors all simultaneously selling stocks and bonds is apparently irrelevant to Senator Warren. The probability that the only buyers of stocks and bonds after a wealth tax would be foreign governments is apparently irrelevant...

A recent New York Times headline read, "Raising Taxes on the Wealthiest Would Pay for Bold Plans." The story says that by soaking the rich "the government could raise large amounts of revenue ... while still allowing them to take home a majority of their income." Nowhere in the story, nor in the endless promises of Democratic presidential candidates, is there a single word about whether more government spending will produce the promised outcomes. We are to take this on faith, despite past performance being a good indicator of future results. Also absent is any expectation that individuals have more...

Oxfam reports that the richest one percent of people in the world own 48 percent of the world's wealth. Many claim that we should be alarmed by income inequality because it hampers upward mobility. Others argue that because income is distributed so unevenly, justice and fairness require income redistribution. Let's look at fairness and justice. What constitutes fairness and justice has been debated for centuries. Widespread agreement has proved to be elusive at best. However, I think that an important part of an intelligent discussion about fairness and justice is the recognition that knowing results of a process cannot establish...

The fiscal train wreck that Obamacare and other health care entitlements will inevitably cause is quickly approaching—and no amount of tax increases can save us from the crash. Although the “Eat the Rich” and “Tax the one percent” way of thinking is currently in vogue, these catchy sound-bites remain nothing more than pithy slogans. Not only can the “rich” not pay it off, but if Congress does not act, the rich, the middle class, and the poor together will not be able to cover the tab. Making matters worse, taxes are scheduled to increase significantly on earners in all income...

The economist offering this “solution” has been feted by the Obama White House economic staff, the International Monetary Fund, and by many of the people running world economies today. His ideas are definitely “in play.” Thomas Piketty, the forty-two year old French economist whose book, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, became an overnight sensation and unexpected bestseller, is being hailed as the new Keynes, an economic thinker who can lead us out of our current economic malaise, just as Keynes is alleged by his followers to have lead us out of the Great Depression. Keynes’s keynote book, The General Theory,...

There is a common saying on Capitol Hill that those who do not come to the table will become the lunch. This refers to those who fail to hire sufficiently well connected lobbyists or make large campaign contributions. Even those who do come to the table may get carved up. When President Obama called the parties making money from medicine into the White House to discuss what would become of Obamacare, most of the special interests tried to make a deal. With the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House, they knew that defiance would likely backfire. The major insurance...

Our Demander-in-Chief has once again put together a budget so mind boggling stupid, so bereft of credibility that it will spontaneously abort somewhere between the White House and the desk of Senator Harry Reid (D-Who Me?). You can think of Obama’s newest budget as the “legitimate rape” of America. All you really need to know about the budget is this headline from the Washington Post’s Wonk Blog: “Obama budget seeks new spending, new taxes to boost economy, tame debt”. Ha, ha, ha. Stop me if you heard that one before. If we gave the government a buck for every time...

To the list of liberals who vote for higher taxes -- and then proceed to complain about them -- add comedian Bill Maher. Incredibly, the caustic, left-wing Maher recently warned, "ln California, I just want to say: Liberals -- you could actually lose me." As a resident of California, a state with high income taxes, Maher complained that his taxes are "over 50 percent." What's more, Maher made a point seldom heard except on Fox News or by a rich Parisian. Maher said, "Rich people ... actually do pay the freight in this country ... like 70 percent" of the...

Are tax hikes on the way? Some federal lawmakers hope so. “It’s a great opportunity to get us some more revenue,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently said of the upcoming debate over the federal budget. You know what that means: calls to raise taxes on the rich. Lawmakers can’t seem to refrain from eyeing the golden goose. It seems fair to most Americans that those who earn more should pay more taxes. But how much more? In a report that drew on 2006 tax data, Heritage Foundation scholar Curtis Dubay showed that a family in the top 20 percent...

Please tell me this is some sort of a sick joke. Phil Mickelson is a professional golfer. He makes boatloads of money. Millions. What’s more, he makes boatloads of money for a lot of other people in the process, including generating massive contributions to charity. He’s a jobs creator and an engine of economic growth, as are many other pro golfers and athletes. So Mickelson takes a look at his income tax burden, and is displeased. First we have Obama and the Democrats riding roughshod over the GOP and enacting a 4.6% tax increase on the evil rich. Then...

Sixteen Democratic senators who voted for the Affordable Care Act are asking that one of its fundraising mechanisms, a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices scheduled to take effect January 1, be delayed.  Echoing arguments made by Republicans against Obamacare, the Democratic senators say the levy will cost jobs — in a statement Monday, Sen. Al Franken called it a “job-killing tax” — and also impair American competitiveness in the medical device field. The senators, who made the request in a letter(PDF) to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are Franken, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Patty Murray, John Kerry, Kirsten Gillibrand,...

“The Universal is to be found in the State...The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth...We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is harder to grasp the Essence of the State...the State is the march of God through the world...” -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, as quoted in Popper, Karl R., The Open Society and its Enemies, 4th ed., 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, vol. 2, p. 31. "...the State 'has the supreme right against the...