e21e21 Event: If You Like What You Have, Can You Keep It?
On Tuesday, January 31st, e21 held an event exploring the implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which was sold to the American people with the promise that “If you like what you have, you can keep it.” New academic research is clearly disproving this claim. The health law provides strong incentives for employers to move their sick and low-wage workers out of job-based plans and into publicly subsidized coverage. The result will be soaring costs for taxpayers, and millions of people losing the coverage they have today.
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iStockphotoWhen Does a Corporate Income Tax Become a VAT? Or Why Do Conservatives Oppose a Flat Tax for Business?
On the heels of his State of the Union Address, President Obama’s Administration is planning to release a reform proposal for the corporate tax system. The plan is supposed to be released in early February, perhaps on the same day as his budget proposal for fiscal year 2013. Read more...
ThinkstockPopulist Rhetoric Does Not a Plan Make
There wasn’t much suspense in the run-up to last night’s state of the union address because President Barack Obama long ago signaled the kind of populist and heavily political speech he was going to deliver. Read more...
iStockphotoThe Fed’s Pyrrhic Victory
Increased consumption by households accounted for 70% of GDP growth in the second half of 2011. This increase in outlays was almost entirely due to the fall in consumer savings. The boost in the economy, therefore, is coming from a rise in the proportion of household income that is being spent, not an increase in household income. Is this sustainable? Read more...
ThinkstockA Look Back at 2011: Congress and White House Edition
Just over a year ago, Republicans won the midterm election in a landslide. They picked up a historic number of seats in the House of Representatives, substantially narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate, and took control of scores of state legislatures and governors’ mansions. The message from voters was clear: they wanted to put an end to the hyper-activist agenda coming from the Obama administration, and to renew policymakers’ focus on promoting private sector economic growth, not more government jobs. Read more...
ThinkstockWhy There Is No Bipartisan Budget Deal
The failure this year of Congress’s joint deficit-reduction committee produced a spate of post-mortems. Some of these analyses focused on problems seen with the committee process itself – its structure, its mission, the weak deterrents to its failure, and others. There was also the predictable mutual blame-laying, with members on each side pointing to the other’s intransigence.
iStockphotoEuro Zone Says "We're Sorry!"
Of the decisions reached at last week’s euro area summit, the one with the biggest consequence was likely the decision to, in the words of Bloomberg news, “Drop Demands for Investors to Take Writeoffs in Future Bailouts.” In the future, policymakers decided that bailouts will be full service: 100 cents on the euro, with no demand for “voluntary private sector participation.” Read more...
HemeraWhat's In the Social Security Trust Funds, Or: Why Continuing the Payroll Tax Cut Could Eventually End Social Security as We Know It
The ongoing effort to partially convert Social Security from payroll-tax-financing to income-tax-financing – by further cutting the payroll tax as a stimulus measure and replacing the funds with general revenues – may in short order put an end to the longstanding conception of Social Security as a benefit earned by worker contributions. The demise of this conception would also threaten the special political protections Social Security benefits have long enjoyed. Read more...
PhotodiscThe Case for Reforming Medicare with Premium Support
In coming years, the United States must take steps to address the serious challenges of a large and growing fiscal gap as well as rapidly rising costs for both public and private purchasers of medical services. At the center of these twin challenges is the Medicare program. It is the largest federal health entitlement program, and Medicare spending is already putting tremendous pressure on federal finances due to many years of rapid cost growth. In the coming two decades, federal spending on Medicare is set to soar even more rapidly. Medicare is also the single largest insurance plan in the United States, and thus central to solving the problem of rapidly rising costs in the nation’s broader health system. Read more...
Pro-Tax Forces Sow Confusion Regarding the Top 1%
The statement that “most of the income growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top 1%” is confusing because the households in the top 1% in 1981 were not the same as the households in the top 1% in 2011. All we really know is that the income of today’s top 1% of taxpayers is higher than the income earned by the top 1% a generation ago. What else can we conclude about the tax data on the top 1%?
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