On tax day: the taxman
[NOTE: This is an edited version of an essay of mine from the past.] Today is the last day to send in your taxes. Ah, paying taxes. What fun! Along with close to 100% of Americans, I hate the process. … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Finance and economics
United: in a culture dominated by social media…
…an airline can’t get off scot-free with this sort of heavy-handed action, which dominated the public chatter today. United Airlines and many other airlines overbook for perfectly understandable economic reasons. It doesn’t usually cause problems, because they also offer economic … Continue reading →
Brexit: breaking up…
…is hard to do. As Britain is now learning. When a country voluntarily signs away some of its autonomy—in this case, to join the EU—it would seem at the outset that such a decision would be reversible if that country … Continue reading →
Trump’s budget proposal
I look on it as Trump’s opening bid in a series of negotiations. The MSM has predictably wailed about the meanness of it all. If you don’t want to wade through that, I think that Ed Morrissey has a fair … Continue reading →
Boycotts and the law of unintended consequences
Boycotts can seem to be potent political tools. But they’re not an all-purpose tool; in organizing a boycott, the target gets a lot of free publicity. But although the intent is negative publicity, the word reaches both sides. And the … Continue reading →
Trump plans to enact conservative budget-cutting program
Interesting: Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned… Overall, the blueprint being used … Continue reading →
Trump and the CEOs: power is the ultimate aphrodisiac
Henry Kissinger said it, not me: Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Case in point: Ringed by tech’s elite, President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday promised to do “anything we can do” to help the industry he often baited during the presidential … Continue reading →
Is it greed, envy, or covetousness?
I saw this at Ace’s a long time ago: I admire just about everything Thomas Sowell has ever written, and when first saw this I thought “Bingo, touche!” But then I started thinking about it and realized it’s not as … Continue reading →
The showman president
With the announcement of Trump’s triumphant (Trumphant?) Carrier deal, the word that occurs to me—not for the first time—is “showman.” That’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, by the way. But it’s not something we’ve seen a … Continue reading →
What’s behind the Carrier deal?
Trump’s deal with Carrier to stay in Indiana rather than moving to Mexico is a stroke of PR brilliance. It’s also an example of exactly why Trump is now feared by the left: he is very good at this kind … Continue reading →
If you think our 2016 election featured an unusual duo of choices…
…take a look at France’s: In France, [pollsters] failed to see that former prime minister Frané§ois Fillon would win the race to become the conservative party’s candidate in April’s presidential election. A social conservative with liberal economic views, Fillon scrambles … Continue reading →
Abusive IRS “service representative,” anyone?
Recently I got a cryptic bill from the IRS for a small amount of money. The reason for the charges was ostensibly explained on the bill, but in a way that only dogs can hear and IRS agents or tax … Continue reading →