by John F. Gaski, Ph.D. On the prospect of ditching the Senate filibuster in order to pass the SAVE Act, Majority Leader John Thune has been heard to say, “The Democrats may intend to steal the car, but we don’t have to give them the keys.” Translated: Don’t provide future Dems with the filibuster weapon. The error of that shallow illogic, however, can be exposed as follows.   For background, to frame the legislative landscape,…

Build It and They Will Come A FEW OF US have spent considerable time trying to find a simple illustration of how the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) works.  Are they trying to mimic a bank in some sloppy way or a Chamber of Commerce? More specifically, how is it a good idea to leverage government money to bet on random enterprises, some of which may only extract wealth from our community rather than invest in it? Is…

‘Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States’ by Arthur Laffer, Brian Domitrovic and Jeanne Cairns by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. “Taxes Have Consequences” (THC) is a masterful survey of income taxation in the United  States since the ratification of the 16th amendment in 1913. The authors make a com pelling case that high income tax rates are bad economic medicine that routinely fail  progressives’ stated goal of reducing income inequality, while the…

Unstacking Public Education IF YOU DIDN’T already think it a bad idea to allow public-sector workers to hire their own bosses and set their own salaries in a self-serving fiscal doom loop then the headline this week in the Capital Chronicle should have been eye-opening: “Union for ISTA Staff Files Unfair Labor Charges.”  Yes, the teachers union’s own employees are suing to wrest management prerogative from the union just as the union has assumed such control from the state and in turn from…

by Dan Eichenberger, MD, MBA In the past 15 years, rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts among adolescents — especially those born after 1995 — have surged. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls this the “Great Rewiring” of childhood: the decline of play-based childhoods and the rise of phone-based ones. The uncomfortable truth is that well-meaning adults helped cause it. We’ve become overprotective in the real world while underprotecting children in the virtual world.  In the…

The Great Crash of 1929 by Mark Franke One of the most fascinating books I read in high school was “The Great Crash: 1929” by John Kenneth Galbraith. I believed what most everyone else did, that the Great Depression was caused by the stock market crash. Galbraith disabused me of such a simplistic explanation. Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — And How It Shattered a…

Politics, Voting Are Overrated “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10 IN THE MORNING MAIL is the two-thousandth postcard asking for my vote. The thought occurs that in a lifetime of going to the polls I have voted against my own interests a good deal of the time. I didn’t know enough — couldn’t know enough — to choose wisely. Might I have been better off letting the more grounded do the voting? Not really; it didn’t matter one way or…

by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. We free-market economists tend to pooh-pooh complaints about income and wealth inequality. When “democratic socialist” or even populist right-wing demagogues complain about stagnant or declining middle-class incomes, we point out all sorts of empirical flaws in the data they use: “They don’t include government transfer payments in income measures.” True. “They don’t include the monetary value of benefits like health insurance.” Often true. “They don’t account for the fact that almost…

Incoming! Media Bias! OK, WE GET IT. The corporate media does not like the application of military power by a Republican president. But like it or not, the destruction of bridges, power supplies and manufacturing plants is what armed forces do when an enemy refuses to surrender. It has been so since the application of gun powder. Before that, they laid siege and threatened to starve everybody to death. An example of the converse is the thousands of lives that…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Ahh, it’s that time of the year again: the weather is (usually) warming; the flowers are blooming; and income tax forms are due. Everyone knows about the IRS and their W-2’s — whether they fill out their taxes by hand, use software, or pay a professional. State and local taxes hit most workers. But at least if you have a family, federal income taxes don’t get rolling until you’re making $50K…