Hilzoy is tired of hearing about “socialism” and “class warfare” just because Barack Obama is raising the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.  After all, we had much higher rates under John Kennedy and even Ronald Reagan, two legendary tax cutters.  And rates are higher in most of the developed world, [...]

Ross Douthat has discovered Barack Obama’s evil genius: What Obama does have, though, is an atmosphere of crisis and a massively-unpopular opposition party, which grants him an unparalleled political opportunity to pass whatever spending the Democratic Party likes, and damn the short-term cost. And what you see in his budgeting proposals, I think, is the [...]

Christopher Buckley, who announced to great fanfare last October that he was voting for Obama, took to the same forum yesterday to announce his misgivings about Obama’s spending. Government is getting bigger and will stay bigger. Just remember the apothegm that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also [...]

In “Upper-Income Taxpayers Look for Ways to Sidestep Obama Tax-Hike Plan,” ABC’s Emily Friedman reports on a disturbing trend: President Barack Obama’s tax proposal — which promises to increase taxes for those families with incomes of $250,000 or more — has some Americans brainstorming ways to decrease their pay, even if it’s just by a [...]

I attended a breakfast this morning with Newt Gingrich as part of the rollout for the American Solutions Winning the Future effort.  As usual, he was an extremely forceful speaker and passionate strategist. He opened by saying that he is an optimist and that “President Obama is doing us a huge favor” by showing how [...]

I actually seldom watch commercials these days, owing to my DVR.  But we’re visiting my mother-in-law and doing it old school tonight.   Several spots have taken on unintended meanings in light of the Obama confirmation debacles. Any TurboTax ad, naturally, makes me think of Tim Geithner.  They’re advertising wall-to-wall but, not surprisingly, have not taken [...]

Conor Friedersdorf has a must-read piece on the complexities of the tax code and the anxieties that it causes. Imagine, for example, that a new job forced me to commute from my house in Washington DC to an office in Northern Virginia. One night, my boss mentions that his driver lives nearby my house.   “I’d [...]

And another one bites the dust: Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary. That’s according to a joint White House statement from President Barack Obama and his former nominee. Obama said Tuesday he accepted the withdrawal “with sadness and regret.” Daschle has been battling for his nomination since it [...]

Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that John Pitney has unearthed this gem of a quote: “Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. ” – Sen. Tom Daschle, Congressional Record, May 7, 1998, p. S4507. One could argue that Daschle is in compliance with the [...]

A second Obama cabinet nominee is having tax troubles, Jake Tapper and Jonathan Karl report. ABC News has learned that the nomination of former Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to be President Obama’s secretary of health and human services has hit a traffic snarl on its way through the Senate Finance Committee.  The controversy [...]

Initially Martin Feldstein was a supporter of the stimulus package. However, he is now opposed to the current pile of pork that has come out of the House of Representatives. As a conservative economist, I might be expected to oppose a stimulus plan. In fact, on this page in October, I declared my support for [...]

Timothy Geithner may be our new Treasury Secretary but that doesn’t mean bloggers can’t still make fun of him. Pejman Yousefzadeh, writing at something called The New Ledger, toasts “The Indispensable Mr. Geithner.” In urging Geithner’s confirmation, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered his entirely nonpartisan opinion that “This powerful economic storm demands strong, decisive [...]

Tom Smith answers the question, “How efficiently can the Government waste money?” with an uncharacteristic optimism. I think alpha is greater than one.  You may think that’s impossible, but I’ve seen it done.  For example, you can tax productive people to pay other people to make sure still other people don’t do anything productive.  If [...]

Caroline Kennedy’s “personal reasons” for dropping a bid to a Senate post for which she was demonstrably unsuited had something to do with taxes and a servant, according to the most poorly reported New York Times article I can recall having read. This is the lede: Problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during [...]

James Taranto: We’re tempted to say America needs a Treasury secretary who is smart enough to figure out his own taxes. But such a cheap shot would be beneath us. Instead, we are going to make a serious point:America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out. Hear hear. Story [...]

Timothy Geithner neglected to pay a rather large sum in taxes owed to the Treasury Department he’s been nominated to lead. President-elect Barack Obama‘s choice to run the Treasury Department and lead the economic rescue effort disclosed to senators Tuesday that he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004, a last-minute complication [...]

Earlier this week, I published the breakdown of tax burdens that has been making the rounds: Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent Second quintile: 9.9 percent Middle quintile: 14.2 percent Fourth quintile: 17.4 percent Percentiles 81-90: 20.3 percent Percentiles 91-95: 22.4 percent Percentiles 96-99: 25.7 percent Percentiles 99.0-99.5: 29.7 percent Percentiles 99.5-99.9: 31.2 percent Percentiles 99.9-99.99: 32.1 [...]

Greg Mankiw runs the numbers from the latest CBO report on “Historical Effective Tax Rates, 1979 to 2005 — Supplement with Additional Data on Sources of Income and High-Income Households” and supplies us with the following “total effective federal tax rates for 2005, the most recent year available.” Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent Second quintile: 9.9 [...]

My Palin Derangement Syndrome post got a number of thoughtful responses, especially for a weekend post. My fellow Jacksonville State alumnus Stacy McCain, a Palin fan, thinks the internal debate on her role in last week’s defeat and her future as a Republican Party standard bearer is one we should have.  He objects strenuously, though, [...]

Matt Yglesias offers these Pew poll results as a rejoinder to those of us who think a win for Obama isn’t a mandate for his policies. Says Matt, “The voters felt they had a choice between a liberal and a conservative, and felt they preferred the liberal and his policy agenda.” Well . . . [...]

A new Rasmussen poll finds that voters trust John McCain more than Barack Obama on taxes (47%to 45%) and on “economic issues” more generally (48% to 47%).  These numbers are, of course, within the margin of error.  They do, however, represent a reversal of a trend and may indicate that the “Joe the Plumber” and [...]

It appears that John McCain’s latest attack against Barack Obama is that Obama’s tax plan is redistributionist. That is Obama’s plan takes money from one group of people and gives it to another group. McCain is right, but my bigger issue is why now Senator? You’ve been in the Senate for a very long time [...]

The Tax Policy Center, a joint effort by the Brookings Institute and the Urban Institute, has looked at both candidates tax proposals and…well it isn’t pretty. Basically both candidates do not believe in fiscal responsibility, both are pandering, and neither of them are willing to make the hard decisions. Which is somewhat to be expected [...]

The McCain campaign has launched two new ad videos in consecutive days under the titles “Broken” and “Family.” I find the juxtaposition amusing.  The spots themselves strike me as weak but, as I keep reminding myself, I’m not the target audience. “Broken” Washington’s broken. John McCain knows it. We’re worse off than we were four [...]

Andrew Sullivan, who successfully coined the term “South Park Republicans,” is trying out a new one: “Judge Judy Republicans.”  He does so in a persuasive response to a new book by his Atlantic colleagues Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. I think that moniker is a little more fitting – if a little less marketable – [...]

Today’s Outrage of the Day on the right side of the blogosphere regards this latest bit from Barack Obama, regarding the need for our educational system to get better at teaching other languages. Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can [...]

This just in: Politicians promise lots of things they won’t be able to deliver if they get elected. Yesterday, we had the hilarity of John McCain’s promise to balance the budget in four years without raising taxes or cutting anything but “wasteful” spending. Today, we’ve got an analysis from the Los Angeles Times showing that [...]

Ezra Klein believes a recent NYT Magazine profile of Rush Limbaugh is a “puff piece.” He lists, for example, Rush’s “presidential platform” as published: 1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. 2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax. 3. Privatize Social Security. 4. Give parents school vouchers to break [...]

An industry report claims that a non-trivial amount of the Bush tax relief checks were spent on adult web sites, with many sites reporting a 20-30 percent growth in membership during a normally slow period and claiming that “thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either [...]

The Manufactured Outrage of the Day comes to us from Joe Stephens and his page A3 piece for today’s Washington Post, “Obama Got Discount on Home Loan.” Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To [...]

The latest mini-scandal in Campaign 2008 is that the McCains have apparently not done a good job keeping track of their finances.   HuffPo has gotten 1420 Diggs at this writing with a story headlined “McCains Defaulted On Home Taxes For Last Four Years, Newsweek Reports.” It promises “a highly embarrassing report.”  Newsweek has delivered with [...]

Ezra Klein awards Snark of the Day honors to Megan Carpentier‘s stunning discovery that babysitters don’t earn a lot of money. Child care professionals are responsible for the health, well-being and development of the fruit of other women’s loins (not mine!) But in exchange for that, the median average salary in 2006 was $17,160. The [...]

The lovely and talented Belle Waring is visiting her native New York from her home in Singapore and was shocked to find how dirty Manhattan, and in particular the Pulaski Skyway (pictured right), is. Old metal that’s just black with soot! And graffiti! Man, if I fully acclimatize to the level of cleanliness, safety, and [...]

Drew Carey asks, “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?” No, not illegal aliens, silly. They get paid (a little) and take the occasional break. No, he’s talking about robots. Today, we don’t need human workers to book our travel, do [...]

Ezra Klein jumps on a growing meme the home ownership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and that the government should stop subsidizing it. He points to Paul Krugman, who argues in today’s NYT that it’s time to rethink our decades-long bipartisan consensus that home ownership should be encouraged. While everyone stresses the advantages [...]

Barack Obama’s latest ad spot has him explaining that, no, really, he’s an American. And, despite what you might have heard, he likes it here. And he’s not a Muslim, either. Here’s the video: The transcript: I’m Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both. [...]

Megan Cerpentier observes that, “despite the stereotype that my taxes should go up under a Democratic tax plan and down under a Republican, it seems that Obama’s tax plan is most likely to lower my tax bills and McCain’s plan will do little or nothing at all for me.” This, because Obama proposes giving self-employed [...]

Quite a few commenters are accusing John McCain of flip-flopping because he favored privatization of Social security in 2004 and now adamantly rejects the insinuation that he supports it now: This is a clumsy rhetorical game rather than a policy shift. Then and now, McCain’s position is that Social Security would remain as a government [...]

Matt Yglesias heaps praise on the WSJ for summarizing a study by the liberal Tax Policy Center (a project of the Urban Institute and Brookings) that concludes: The two candidates’ plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain’s tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive [...]

The folks at the Christian Science Monitor argue that the division of America into Red and Blue states based on aggregate voting behavior is flawed. They propose, instead, that we’re a “Patchwork Nation” comprised of at least eleven different voter communities. Nearly 305 million people live in the United States, according to the US Census [...]

Kevin Drum, responding to Jonah Goldberg‘s argument that George Packer‘s “The Fall of Conservatism” erroneously conflates conservatism with the Republican Party, retorts: No political ideology lives in isolation. We judge communism by how Mao and Stalin implemented it, we judge 60s-era liberalism by how LBJ and the Democratic Party implemented it, and we judge social [...]

Jeralyn Merritt recounts a blogger call with Senator Hillary Clinton: She is staying in the race. She is ahead in the popular vote by 50,000 votes, counting Florida and Michigan which must be counted. She intends to continue to lead in the popular vote when June 3 comes around and everyone has voted. The number [...]

Karl Rove has an op-ed in today’s WSJ entitled, “The GOP Must Stand for Something.” I followed the link to it from memeorandum mostly so as to make a “now he wants to stand for something” comment. After reading the piece, though, the thing that stands out is that it doesn’t tell us what the [...]

While Democrats debate the likelihood of a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton “Dream Ticket,” the latest word is that Mike Huckabee is currently at the top of the list to be John McCain’s running mate. James Pethokoukis attributes this information to “a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain’s inner circle.” The [...]

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry argues for abolishing the minimum voting age and letting kids vote “when they decide they want the vote.” Matt Yglesias seconds the emotion. Gobry’s argument is long and largely defies excerpting. It boils down to: Setting maturity at 18 is arbitrary. Kids will grow up and face the consequences of current policy decisions, [...]

The latest report issued by the Medicare Trustees is not good. The HI annual cost rate is projected to increase from 3.11 percent of taxable payroll in 2007 to 11.40 percent in 2082—8.02 percent of taxable payroll more than the projected income rate for 2082. Expressed in relation to the projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP), [...]

Anna Quindlen argues that Supreme Court appointments are the most important choices presidents make. Congress chips away at legislation, then sends some lowest-common-denominator version to the White House, to be signed or vetoed or later redesigned by the next president to take up temporary residence in Washington. But the work of the high court has [...]

An amusing mock sign shows that gas prices are artificially inflated by our refusal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore. Via E. Frank Stephenson, who suggests we also “carve out 50 cents or so for taxes and a dollar or so for Ben Bernanke’s debasing the dollar.” There’s not much doubt [...]

Los Angeles County has strengthened its law against taco trucks and other mobile food vendors at the insistence of brick-and-mortar restaurant owners, Jonathan Gold reports. Last week, led by Gloria Molina, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed a law basically outlawing taco trucks, making it a crime for them to linger at one location [...]

New York is trying to collect taxes from online retailers who ship goods to the state, even if they have no brick-and-mortar presence. Amazon is suing, claiming the law is unconstitutional. Amazon.com has filed a lawsuit challenging New York State’s new law forcing online retailers to collect sales tax on shipments to state residents. On [...]