America is supposed to be the land of the free, yet it is has one of the most vicious tax regimes in the rich world. Once blessed with comparatively low tax rates and levels of regulation, businesses and entrepreneurs flocked to the United States from the sclerotic systems of Europe (and elsewhere). Now American businesses are fleeing America’s shores and foreign-born entrepreneurs are less inclined to come at all.
Economics · Featured · Liberty
All over the world, advocates of the free market are looking askance at Pope Francis. Since succeeding Benedict XVI in 2013, Pope Francis has mounted a vocal challenge to what he sees as the now dominant global ideology of capitalism.
Economics · Government · Politics
David King has a point. In an article entitled “Why Public Transit Is Not Living Up to Its Social Contract: Too many agencies favor suburban commuters over inner-city riders,” King,[...]
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Environment/Energy · Featured
Who says bipartisanship is dead? We recently had 57 Senators and 152 House members – (obviously) culled from both Parties – sign letters to Barack Obama Administration Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. In which[...]
![regulation[1]](http://blog.heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/regulation1-150x100.jpg)
Last week, I discussed tax reform as the first component of a comprehensive agenda to restore booming economic growth, and the American Dream. This week, I will discuss a second[...]
In the minds of many people around the world, including in the United States, the term “capitalism” carries the idea of unfairness, exploitation, undeserved privilege and power, and immoral profit[...]
Economics · Education · Featured · Government
College education has more and more been described by the political left as a right to which citizens ought to be entitled. This view has been popularized among left-leaning students, many of whom are energized by ruinously expensive college loans. They clamor for the “fair solution”, namely that the government should pay for all of it. The effort to make college a right is a disastrous proposition. It is a dangerous pipe-dream that could devastate an already rickety higher education sector. There are problems with the way student loans and college fees operate at present, but this is not the way to fix it.
Today’s economy is driven by Washington in more than just determining the location of Maserati dealerships. We see the ramifications of current government policies in numerous obvious ways. Make full-time employment more expensive with required benefits, and suddenly there are more part-time jobs; provide ample benefits and low eligibility standards for defining disabled workers, and suddenly there are more long-term unemployed going on SSDI; keep interest rates at zero, and suddenly there are more elderly workers; end unemployment insurance, and suddenly you see people accepting jobs they were reluctant to take; and as we’ve seen at the state and local level, raise the minimum wage, and suddenly teens are struggling to find work.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Government
Debt is an issue that affects countries all over the world. Almost all countries are in debt as their governments take loans to cover for variations in their tax receipts. Yet while many developed countries such as Greece and Ireland are increasingly facing debt crises of their own, the effect of such debt is not nearly as crippling as it is for developing nations.
Here is a question for your consideration. Why does a nickel trade for five pennies? The answer involves examining the alternatives.
Economics · Featured · Government · Regulation
A cautionary tale about the pitfalls of bureaucratic incompetence played out in Ireland over the last several days. American country music star Garth Brooks was scheduled to play five concerts in the Croke Park arena, one of the largest venues in the country. In all, 400,000 tickets were sold. That is an astonishing number, considering Ireland’s population is just under 4.6 million. Close to one in ten citizens was planning to attend!
Economics · Environment/Energy
The delay of the Keystone XL pipeline is a perfect example of the way President Obama and his administration has engaged in, not just a war on coal, but on[...]
According to the Commerce Department, the economy based on its Gross domestic product–the value of its goods and services–fell at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.9% in the first quarter of this year. That was the largest recorded drop since the end of World War II in 1945!
Economics · Featured · Liberty · Podcast · Regulation
Convenient transportation has become a staple in today’s society, however, convenience is no longer enough. People need to have access to a ride in real time. Every transportation service is coming up[...]
Economics · Featured · Politics
Hillary Clinton’s memoir, Hard Choices, has failed the one test even the Obama White House cannot rig (or simply chose not to do): book sales numbers. Although the legacy media have commonly characterized sales of her book as lukewarm so far, the numbers are significantly worse than that, considering her name-recognition and public prominence.
Economics · Featured · Government · Politics
Rarely do some of the nation’s most powerful politicians and businesspeople laud banks that report big profits when in fact they have lost billions of dollars. But we’re witnessing this spectacle on behalf of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which for many decades, and for good reason, has been called by its critics “The Bank of Boeing.” Its charter expires September 30, and a battle over its possible extension is brewing between the political establishment and reformers.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · FIRE
Alexander Hamilton was America’s first Secretary of Treasury under President George Washington. When he first entered office in 1789, America was an agricultural nation of just 4 million still broke[...]
Economics · Featured · Government
So much blood and treasure was wasted during the long occupation in Iraq that there was a sigh of relief across America when the troops finally left. Yet the end of the American presence has resulted in chaos. Islamist extremists in recent days have been making gains against the Iraqi military, seizing several towns, including the city of Mosul. The sheer rapidity of the collapse of law and order in Iraq led to a lot of hand-wringing in the White House. President Obama finally decided to send a few hundred troops to bolster the beleaguered regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This choice will only serve to further diminish the status of the United States in the region.
Economics · Featured · Government · Health Care · Liberty
The dearth of transplantable organs remains a serious problem in the United States and in much of the world. There are 123,000 Americans currently waiting for an organ. 18 of them die every day because demand continues to exceed supply. The problem has drawn the attention of many activists and policymakers, but sometimes the proposed solutions have proven more unpleasant than the problem. Chief among these unsavory solutions is the policy of opt-out organ donation.
Forty years ago, during the week of June 15-22, 1974, the Austrian School of Economics was reborn during a conference in the small New England town of South Royalton, Vermont. Why was this important? Because the economists of the Austrian School have developed the most persuasive understanding of why only economic freedom can give mankind both liberty and prosperity.
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