Tag Archives: taxes

Economic Ignorance on Display

Yesterday in the local paper there was a short article about the school district buying 60 iPads to distribute to some of the students.

Leaving aside such issues as how 60 iPads can be divided among several hundred students or whether iPads, in and of themselves, can actually aid students in actually learning (which I doubt), my main take away from the article is the economic ignorance on display.

As reported in the July 19, 2013 Caledonian Record:

School officials initially planned to purchase the read more

Ayn Rand’s Ideas (One at Least) Alive in Vermont

In her essay “Government Financing in a Free Society”, which can be found in The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand says:

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for read more

Theft and Taxes

theft and taxesI received this short and to the point comment on a post I made on Google+ recently regarding the difference between subsidies and tax breaks: 

Ah, it’s the same old ‘taxes are theft’ horseshit. Your kind never gets tired of that malarkey.

This caused me to stop and think.  Is the idea that “taxes are theft” malarkey or is there some basis for it in reality?

Government Intervention…What Could go Wrong?

So what can happen when the government interferes with the economy?  Let’s take a peek at what happened in the case of health insurance, specifically employer provided insurance.

In 1942, in an effort to control costs and prevent disruptions in the labor market, the government passed the Stabilization Act which essentially froze prices, wages and salaries at the level they were at in September, 1942.  Exempted from this was insurance read more

Gun Control, Fiscal Cliff Cronyism and more

Some good links for this week.

Enjoy!

This is perhaps my favorite article of the week, though there were plenty of good ones, and I quite honestly lost track of some.

With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral

Really nice take on the whole gun control issue.  I especially like his statement: “Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That’s collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you read more

Some Interesting Articles

I tend to read a bunch of articles over the course of a week, so I thought I would share some of my favorites from the past week.  I am going to try and do this every Wednesday.  This is by no means a complete list, but it does include most of the articles that I had particularly made note of, at least since I decided to publish such a list.

First the “Rich”, and Then YOU!

first the rich, then I'm coming after youProbably like a great many of you, I am getting sick of hearing about the fiscal cliff, or more accurately, of hearing about the proposed “solutions” to the fiscal cliff.

It seems that the President and Congressional Democrats, and to some extent Republicans as well, think the only solution is to tax the “rich” and maybe talk about some spending cuts, maybe, some time in the future. I think history has pretty well shown that when the government talks about tax increases read more

I Like Ike’s Restrained Spending

There has been a lot of talk lately about the “good ‘ol days” in the 1950s, when we had good economic growth, strong labor unions and high top marginal tax rates. One of my favorite blogs, Cafe Hayek, has done a number of posts regarding this. I would recommend that you take a look.