WSJ-The Biden Tax Mirage

Marginal rates have been a lot higher, but the actual share the top 1% pay stays remarkably constant. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon May 12, 2021 12:39 pm ET With deficits at levels not seen since World War II, the March $1.9 trillion stimulus only beginning to spend out, and President...
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Incredible Shrinking Income Inequality

Its rise is an illusion created by the Census Bureau’s failure to account for taxes and welfare. By Phil Gramm and John Early March 23, 2021 12:34 pm ET The refrain is all too familiar: Widening income inequality is a fatal flaw in capitalism and an “existential” threat to democracy. From 1967...
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WSJ-The Risks of Too Much ‘Stimulus’

Disposable real per capita income rose 5.5% in 2020, the highest rate since 1984, due largely to transfer payments. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon Feb. 2, 2021 6:17 pm ET Even among economists who strongly support President Biden, a consensus is growing that the economy emerged from last year set for...
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WSJ-Welcome to the Era of Nonstop Stimulus

Spending didn’t speed the last recovery, but Biden’s team is keen to keep the money flowing endlessly. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon Jan. 3, 2021 1:18 pm ET When President Obama’s last Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, made the extraordinary claim that the Obama economic recovery failed because Washington “stopped [spending] too...
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WSJ-In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World

In the 1840s, Dickens didn’t see how businessmen like his hero were already lifting mankind from poverty. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon Dec. 23, 2020 5:36 pm ET No Christmas story except the biblical account of Jesus’ birth has been more often retold or more cherished than Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas...
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