New information from the Census Bureau confirms that the Swamp is still the Swamp. Between 2013 and 2017, the five wealthiest areas in America by median income were Loudoun County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; Howard County, Maryland; Falls Church City, Virginia; and Arlington County,…
New information from the Census Bureau confirms that the Swamp is still the Swamp. Between 2013 and 2017, the five wealthiest areas in America by median income were Loudoun County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; Howard County, Maryland; Falls Church City, Virginia; and Arlington County,…
Seattle
You've probably read recently about the wave of unrest in Iran that has led to at least 24 deaths and 8,000 arrests. Many of the protesters have chanted for the “death” of Iran’s leaders, President Hassan Rouhani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
There have been very few Renaissance men since the Renaissance—and they weren’t exactly thick on the ground even in their glory days. No modern figure is more worthy of that appellation than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who was not only the greatest German poet, playwright,…
Long before I ever even picked up a golf club, I wanted to be the kind of person who golfed regularly. A Real Golfer, in other words. Even as a child, I loved the manicured, tightly controlled aesthetic of golf courses—just the right (which is to say, minimal) amount of “nature” for my…
Long before I ever even picked up a golf club, I wanted to be the kind of person who golfed regularly. A Real Golfer, in other words. Even as a child, I loved the manicured, tightly controlled aesthetic of golf courses—just the right (which is to say, minimal) amount of “nature” for my…
Move over, Bill Gates: There’s a new richest man in the world.
American culture may be approaching the event horizon of politics, from which all matter(s), including harmless diversions, cannot escape. This includes the Twitter account We Rate Dogs (@dog_rates), which was sucked into the singularity on Thursday.
Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, one of his transition team's top priorities should be ensuring that the candidate who came to power on a pledge to drain the federal swamp of corruption and self-dealing is not pulled into the mire upon his inauguration. The problem is not Trump's…
This spectacular history traces the rise and plateau of the American economy since industrialization. Massive productivity gains from a networked society led to huge rises in life expectancy and per capita income. Addressing the slowdown of recent decades, economist Robert J. Gordon adopts the…
Asheville, N.C.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has announced the outline of his tax proposal in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday evening. Among Bush's proposals are three income-tax brackets (28 percent, 25 percent, and 10 percent), cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, and eliminating…
Hillary Clinton has unveiled a "profit sharing" tax plan. The details of the plan have been published on her website.
Neil Shah of the Wall Street Journal writes:
The discussion over economic inequality in the United States seems to have captured the public imagination, at least on the political left. President Obama has called it “the defining challenge of our time,” and Secretary Clinton has deemed it “a cancer.” Given the shorthand manner in which…
The president and his party are reworking the message. Envy is out – or to be downplayed, anyway – and optimism is in. They tried “wealth inequality,” and it didn’t resonate. Now, as Zachary A. Goldfarb, at the Washington Post reports:
Former President Bill Clinton insists he and his wife, Hillary Clinton, are not out of touch. The examples he cites? They talk to people at their "local grocery store on the weekend" and, he adds, they "talk to people in [their] town."
Hillary Clinton will be getting $225,000 to speak at a university fundraiser later this year. Students at the same school, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, have recently been outraged that the institution is raising tuition by a staggering 17 percent.
In what some are interpreting as a veiled shot at Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden says that the fact he isn't rich shouldn't be held against him:
At a Beverly Hills estate last night, President Obama heard a complaint from a major donor: There's no valet parking at the White House. The complaint was made by Haim Saban, who hosted a fundraiser with the president last night.
Washington, D.C. is booming. That's in large part because of a massive growth in lobbying expenditures and federal contracts.
It is no secret that Washington generally prospers even as the rest of the country struggles. In a rough fashion, prosperity in the capital and economic hardship in the rest of the country are inversely related. An economic crisis means lots of new government pump priming--remember the…
The bigger and more bewildering the legislation, the better for the Lords and Ladies of K Street. So as Megan R. Wilson of The Hill reports:
This morning on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof asserted that Bill Gates, who was seated nearby on set, is "richer than God":
President Barack Obama made his position on tax rates clear today in remarks at the Daimler Detroit Diesel Plant in Redford Michigan.
The Wall Street Journal editors are unhappy about the present correlation of political forces. Who isn't? They're also, I gather, unhappy about "Beltway sages" who, facing the fact that the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, have suggested Republicans accept a modest increase in tax…
Warren Buffett is by now no stranger to the national debate over federal tax policy. In 2009, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for "truly major changes in both taxes and outlays." Two years later, he returned to the Times with a widely publicized call for large tax increases on the…
The boss made the case over the weekend that the payroll tax should not be forgotten. Likewise, Ross Douthat writes:
President Obama used his most recent interview with the Associated Press, released today, once again to hit Mitt Romney for investing overseas. "[T]he small bits of disclosure that he has put forward indicate investments in the Bahamas, or Swiss bank accounts," Obama said of Romney.
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking in Philadelphia this afternoon at the International Association of Fire Fighters 51st Convention, said, "I wish my kids would become wealthy."
Speaking this afternoon to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in Orlando, Florida, President Obama stated that "in this country, prosperity has never come from the top down."
Reason reports:
Joe Biden, speaking in Ohio today, said that he is "tired of being called a 'Middle Class Joe.'"
A report issued last week by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) finds that the average tax burden on income in the United States has been declining in recent years, in sharp contrast to the trend in the other OECD countries. Naturally, progressives have been quick to…
A few months ago, when President Obama proposed to restrict the deductibility of charitable contributions made by relatively well-off Americans, I asked why Obama is so opposed to having money go directly to the needy, rather than having it first be filtered through the government. Yet last week,…
On October 1, 2010, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney described the genius of the American idea and lauded its results. “No nation has done more to lift people out of poverty than this nation,” he said in remarks at Benedetto’s, an Italian restaurant in Tampa, Florida. “Our free enterprise…
There’s a lot of silliness on all sides of the Bain Capital debate.
NBC journalist Chuck Todd reportedly asked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney whether he’d release his tax returns this election cycle. “I never say never,” Romney responded, according to the New York Times. “I don't intend to do so.”
There are two battles going on that will influence how the economy performs for the rest of this year. The first is a battle for attention between the general economic news and the profits performance of America’s leading companies. The second is a battle between austerity advocates and the…