The City Council of Knoxville, Tennessee is considering a property tax freeze for some apartment owners. Property owners who choose to participate in the program will be encouraged to keep rents affordable for low- and moderate-income households. Given that property taxes can be one of a landlord’s biggest expenses, this proposal could provide significant relief…
A growing movement is underway to impose a global minimum tax of 2 percent on the world’s 2,700 billionaires. This would raise an estimated $250 billion annually. One stated purpose of the movement is to “clampdown on tax evasion.” In truth, such a tax would be akin to eating the seed corn. To eat the…
A growing number of public officials are sounding the alarm that a decreasing birth rate in the United States could lead to a myriad of problems within a few decades. Their predictions will likely come true, unless we follow Ayn Rand’s advice and check our premises. A senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies…
Critics of school choice programs often argue that taxpayer money shouldn’t be used for private schooling. Such arguments evade the fact that parents are taxpayers too. Taxpayer money does not magically appear in government coffers. It is money that has been taken from individuals and businesses. It is money taken from parents and non-parents alike….
This post is the sixth in a series. In the early 1990s, I wrote a paper titled “Government Without Taxation.” In the paper, I examined various ways to finance government without coercive taxation. At the time, I thought that this would be a good topic for a book and made several futile attempts to write…
It is extremely rare for socialists and capitalists to agree on an issue. After all, socialists believe that the state should control the economy while capitalists advocate for a complete separation of state and economics. However, on the issue of publicly funded sports stadiums, socialists and capitalists seem to agree, but that agreement is an…
Politicians can sometimes be rather creative in finding new ways to coerce individuals to act as the politicians’ desire. And they can be equally creative in how they present their schemes to the public. Several Canadian cities provide an interesting example of this. Following the lead of Vancouver, both Hamilton and Ottawa are considering a…
Legislators across the country are scrambling to develop policies that will lead to more affordable housing. (Affordable housing means that a family is paying 30 percent or less of its income on housing.) One of the most popular schemes is to provide tax credits for developers who agree to set aside a percentage of their…
Last week, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced that she is in favor of injustice and introduced the Pandemic Crisis Excess Profits Tax. In a press release, she said that the tax would be a limited-time tax on the excess profits of large corporations who profited beyond their average profits over the past several years due to…
In recent years, transparency has become a popular political buzzword. From legislators to taxpayers, everyone seems to want government to be more transparent. As one example, the eminent domain reform bill recently passed by the Texas Senate is aimed at making the process more transparent. As another example, a bill introduced by State Senator Lois…
The curriculum in government schools is chosen and dictated by government officials. The textbooks used in government schools are chosen by government officials. The ideas taught in government schools, and the vast majority of Texas schoolchildren attend government schools, are determined by government officials. Parents who disagree with those ideas often have no viable alternatives…
When legislators convene in Austin next week, reducing the tax burden on property owners will be near the top of the to-do list. But no matter what schemes that lawmakers concoct, we can be certain that fundamental reform won’t occur. Government schools in Texas are funded primarily through property taxes. State officials will be faced…