Author: Veronique De Rugy

When outspoken socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was in the presidential race, he often expressed his dream to turn the United States into a Nordic-type social democracy like the one in Denmark. Hillary Clinton dismissed his comments by claiming that the United States isn’t Denmark. But the truth is that at the center of her political […]

Which states in our union are the most tolerant of marijuana and guns? Which interfere the least with your life? Which are likelier to hand out special goodies to politically connected companies? Those are some of the questions answered by economists Will Ruger and Jason Sorens in the 2016 edition of their study “Freedom in […]

Hillary Clinton recently laid out her plan for the economy, which boils down to more government, more spending, more taxes, more regulations and more red tape. It translates into more debt and less growth. Some of the most outrageous provisions of her plan are those that target U.S. corporations abroad. To be fair, Clinton’s policies […]

With both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton selecting the Detroit Economic Club as the venue for their “big” campaign economic speeches, the Motor City is receiving a lot of attention this election cycle. But a fixation on Detroit’s revival is evidence of a backward-looking vision and a gross misunderstanding of economic development and prosperity. During […]

Remember when the Obama administration promised that the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid would be awesome? The idea behind this part of the law was that the expansion of the pool of people eligible for Medicaid would help reduce the number of uninsured and that these new enrollees would be relatively cheap when compared […]

The federal government is packed full of crony programs, such as the Export-Import Bank and the ethanol mandate. When it comes to the unhealthy marriage between government and the private sector, however, the U.S. Department of Agriculture may take the cake. With the exception of food stamps, which should have nothing to do with the […]

The Congressional Budget Office recently released its long-term budget outlook. There isn’t much new there; we are still in the red, and it will only continue to get worse. Considering the extent of the problem, you would think someone on the campaign trail would pay attention. Yet no presidential candidate really is. First, CBO projects […]

As recent events have demonstrated, more than 50 years after much-delayed civil rights legislation was passed by Congress and signed into law, very different views on the persistence of racism still exist in America. According to the Pew Research Center, 38 percent of whites believe that “our country has made the changes needed to give […]

Making a profit by selling goods and services that consumers want to buy at given prices is the first goal of any business. If consumers aren’t interested and the business doesn’t adapt, it will go under. That’s unless you are the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Service is a major business enterprise operated by the […]

Cronyism is the ugly marriage between special interest groups and politicians, which results in an abuse of the government’s power to grant special privileges to a few winners — for example, unfairly preventing competition or doling out subsidies and bailouts at the expense of taxpayers. Though cronyism is always outrageous, the way cronies go about […]

The Congressional Budget Office has a new report looking at the return of federal investment in transportation and research. The bottom line is that the return is not so much as the private-sector investment. So rather than invest more money in federal investments, let’s get rid of all the federal policies that get in the […]

If you think that all members of Congress have to comply with all of the laws that we common citizens have to obey, think again. Over the years, Congress has passed thousands of bills and statutes that dictate how we should or shouldn’t live our lives, but its members often fail to comply with these […]

If you think that all members of Congress have to comply with all of the laws that we common citizens have to obey, think again. Over the years, Congress has passed thousands of bills and statutes that dictate how we should or shouldn’t live our lives, but its members often fail to comply with these […]

Many states are broke, even though their constituents don’t know it. The two main drivers of states’ fiscal problems are the bloated promises made by lawmakers to their public employees about health care and pension benefits and an unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of a problem. Whether the dodging of long-term obligations is done knowingly […]

One of the assets of the American economic model is a relatively flexible labor market, especially when compared with labor markets in many European countries. It explains some of the consistently lower U.S. unemployment rates and higher economic growth. Unfortunately, this flexibility is increasingly threatened by government policies that would increase the cost of employing […]

During a visit to the World Bank this week, I got a sobering lesson about the degree to which the people working at international bureaucracies, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, dislike tax competition. For years, these organizations — which are funded with our hard-earned tax dollars — have bullied low-tax nations into […]

Corporate welfare takes many forms: a tax break to a particular industry, a tariff against foreign sugar producers to shelter domestic producers from competition, a loan guarantee program for exporters, etc. It can also take the form of lawmakers forcing the Department of Defense to provide New Balance athletic shoes — and only New Balance […]

Some members of Congress want the Department of Justice to know that they are unhappy. The source of their consternation is the correct DOJ’s finding in 2011 that the 1961 federal Wire Act — long believed to prohibit all forms of interstate gambling — is in fact “limited only to sports betting.” To show their […]

In an interview about his legacy recently published by The New York Times, President Barack Obama took a shot at the Reagan revolution to make the case that contrary to conservative dogma, tax cuts and other free market policies — such as cutting spending — weren’t good at jump-starting the economy. The implication seems to […]

Creating something that people want is how one gets wealthy in a market economy. Sadly, there’s another way to get rich. It’s called cronyism, and it can make billions for the lucky businesses that get government support — whether their products are profitable or not. In the process, the taxpayers foot the bill. Taxpayer insurance […]

Americans just finished filing and paying for their federal income taxes. It was painful and expensive. Collectively, we still have several more days to go before we are done paying for our entire tax bill. In 2016, Tax Freedom Day is April 24. As the Tax Foundation explains in its annual report on the issue, […]

The intensity with which some American companies try to use the government to trick or deceive consumers is astonishing. Yet the extent to which lawmakers seem content to cater to these crony pursuits never disappoints, either. Case in point: the current attempt to protect contact lens sellers from competition at the expense of consumers. An […]

The intensity with which some American companies try to use the government to trick or deceive consumers is astonishing. Yet the extent to which lawmakers seem content to cater to these crony pursuits never disappoints, either. Case in point: the current attempt to protect contact lens sellers from competition at the expense of consumers. An […]

If you haven’t heard yet, the release of the so-called Panama Papers has revealed that top global leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iceland’s prime minister may be using companies and other business entities created by a Panama-based firm as a way to avoid taxes or conceal wealth. It’s creating quite an uproar. […]

The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, businessman Donald Trump, has been called a lot of things by the media and his adversaries. When it comes to his policy positions, however, it’s difficult to put a political label on him. For instance, though he holds some pretty standard free market positions on taxes, he’s far […]

What do Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., President Barack Obama and all the Republican presidential candidates have in common? They all want to fundamentally reform the corporate income tax. President Obama proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. Sen. Schumer wants a major reduction to taxation of corporate income abroad. Sen. […]