Killing the Death Tax
This summer, the Senate fell short of the super-majority needed to bring to a vote a measure permanently repealing the estate tax.
Economic and Public Health Benefits of Coal-Based Energy
Coal is critical to electricity production in many countries and the United States is no exception. It is a low-cost source of reliable, baseload power – continuously produced power necessary to keep electricity flowing.
Update 2006: Why Are Health Costs Rising?
Prices for medical services have been rising faster than prices of other goods and services for as long as anyone can remember. But not all health care prices are rising.
The Alternative Minimum Tax Threatens Middle-Income Families
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) enacted in 1978 was intended to tax the small number of wealthy individuals who, in any given year, legally owe no personal income tax due to the many exemptions allowed by the U.S. tax code.
Constructive Thinking about Climate Change, Part II
Over the next 50 years the world's developing nations will seek to emulate the West's material success. Access to cheap and dependable energy is critical to their continued progress from poverty. Electrical energy is especially important – it powers schools, hospitals and water treatment plants.
Crisis of the Uninsured: 2006 Update
Despite claims that there is a health insurance crisis in the United States, the proportion of Americans without health coverage has changed little in the past decade. The increase in the number of uninsured is largely due to immigration and population growth.
Will Mandatory Health Insurance Work?
The latest fad among Republicans is enforcing "personal responsibility" by requiring individuals to buy health insurance. It was enshrined in the recent Massachusetts health reform law, proudly signed by Gov. Mitt Romney and endorsed by a number of conservative, and even libertarian, organizations.
Automatic 401(k)s: A Win for Workers
Congress has made it easier for workers to prepare for retirement by passing the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Most of the media coverage has focused on how the new act will affect corporate defined-benefit pension plans like the one for pilots at Northwest or Delta Airlines. However, the most important and far-reaching features of the bill are provisions that encourage the expansion of such employer-sponsored retirement accounts as 401(k)s and 403(b)s. These reforms – long2007 advocated by the NCPA and the Brookings Institution – are particularly important for younger and future workers. As defined benefit plans dry up, 401(k) plans are becoming the norm.
Federal Medicaid Funding Reform
Medicaid is a joint federal-state health care program, primarily for the poor. At the federal level, Medicaid is an entitlement, implying that each enrollee has a right to benefits, regardless of the state in which he or she resides. However, federal funds are not distributed equally.
Saving Health Insurance from the Minimum Wage
Political support is growing in Congress for another increase in the federal minimum wage. A bill now under consideration would raise the minimum hourly wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over the next two years. According to the Economic Policy Institute, an estimated 6.6 million workers currently earn less than $7.25, and a total of 14.9 million workers would be affected by 2008.
Constructive Thinking about Climate Change, Part I: Energy
If human use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) is largely responsible for global warming – and this warming is reasonably likely to cause harms that society would like to avoid or minimize – the technologies that fuel the world's economies must be reassessed. In particular, nuclear power could be the best choice to reduce the climate change risks posed by fossil fuels.
In the Public Interest: Tapping the Outer Continental Shelf
The United States needs oil and natural gas. Oil is fuel and a feedstock for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers and lubricants. Natural gas is used for cooking, heating homes and water, and is also critical to chemical manufacturing. The best estimates indicate that by 2025 U.S. oil consumption will grow by one-third – even with the rise of renewable biofuels – and electricity demand will increase by more than 45 percent, with natural gas fueling much of the new electric power generation.
How Economic Freedom Can Increase Oil Supplies
Surging demand for oil in rapidly developing countries like China and India and sustained demand in the United States and the rest of the world has outstripped growth in global production, reducing excess capacity to near zero and pushing oil prices to an all-time high of more than $75 a barrel in April 2006.
The Truth about An Inconvenient Truth
Former Vice President Al Gore has long argued that human activities — primarily the burning of fossil fuels — are causing the Earth to warm significantly, with potentially catastrophic results. His most recent attempt to persuade the general public of his view is a movie and companion book entitled An Inconvenient Truth.
Consumer-Driven Health Care Spurs Innovation in Physician Services
Consumer-driven health care (CDHC) is leading to new models for the delivery of medical services. Consumer-driven health plans generally include personal accounts — such as Health Reimbursement Arrangements or Health Savings Accounts — that allow patients to directly control some of their health care dollars. Because they have a financial stake in their own spending, patients have incentives to shop for the best price and to make tradeoffs between convenience and cost.
How to Create a Competitive Insurance Market
Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) has introduced the Health Care Choice Act (H.R. 2355), which would increase access to individual health coverage by allowing insurers licensed to sell policies in one state to offer them to residents of any other state. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S. 1015). If enacted, the law would create a more competitive, nationwide health insurance market.
Bringing Down Gasoline and Oil Prices
The national average price of gasoline is approaching the record high of $3.21 per gallon (adjusted for inflation) set in 1981. [See the figure.] The public is upset, and politicians are scrambling to find ways to reduce the pain of high prices or, failing that, to appease their constituents by investigating, penalizing or punitively taxing oil companies.
We All Pay for the Estate Tax
Congress is debating repeal of the estate tax — again. The 2001 tax cuts included a gradual phase-out and full repeal of the estate tax in 2010. But due to the sunset provision imposed by federal budget rules, the estate tax will reappear at its full pre-reform rates in 2011. At that time, estates in excess of $2 million will be taxed at the old rates — up to 55 percent.
Would You Benefit from a Roth IRA?
Millions of Americans are saving for retirement in 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). These tax-deferred accounts allow people to invest pretax dollars, but require them to pay taxes on their deposits and accumulated earnings at the time of withdrawal. By contrast, a Roth account allows individuals to deposit after-tax dollars, but withdraw the accumulated balances tax-free.
Taxing the Elderly
The Social Security benefits tax – while nominally a tax on Social Security benefits – is really a tax on other retirement income like pensions or personal savings. And it inflicts some of the highest marginal tax rates in the entire federal tax code.
Trade and Economic Growth, Part I
International trade – the essence of globalization – benefits the world economy as a whole. It allows people, regions and nations to specialize in the production of what they do best, to enjoy the economies of large-scale production and to buy more cheaply those things that others do best. Impediments to trade limit the benefits of trade.
Trade and Economic Growth, Part II
The period between 1950 and 2000 was the greatest half-century in human history in terms of the improvement of economic conditions and the betterment of life for the great majority of people. The last quarter of the 20th century was probably the best 25 years of all time from a strictly economic point of view.
Polar Bears on Thin Ice, Not Really!
Recently, some scientists have claimed that human-caused global warming poses a significant threat to the survival of many species. For most species at risk, they argue, warming will cause the range of suitable habitat to shift faster than either the species (or their food sources) can move or adapt to a new range.
The Negative Effects of the Minimum Wage
Various state legislators and interest groups around the United States are pushing for increases in the minimum wage. In California, for example, even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now advocates raising the state minimum wage from its current $6.75 an hour to $7.75 by July 2007. But when the minimum wage law confronts the law of demand, the law of demand wins every time. And the real losers are the most marginal workers – the ones who will be out of a job.
Taxing Profits, Draining Energy
Gasoline prices last year never reached the inflation-adjusted peak of the 1980s, but due to a variety of factors they were much higher than Americans have become accustomed to recently. These included strong demand in the United States and several developing nations, production and refining decisions by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and political instability in a number of oil exporting countries.