US Economy

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin is starting to feel surrounded. On her state’s southern border, Texas has no income tax. Now two of its other neighbors, Missouri and Kansas, are considering plans to cut and eventually abolish their income taxes. “Oklahoma doesn’t want to end up an income-tax sandwich,” she quips. [...]

Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama administration over mandated contraception services, must be permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about the innate tensions between the state and its citizens. [...]

President Obama has frequently justified his policies—and judged their outcomes—in terms of equity, justice and fairness. That raises an obvious question: How does our existing system—and his own policy record—stack up according to those criteria? Is it fair that the richest 1% of Americans pay nearly 40% of all federal [...]

Those of us who wish that the euro be brought to an end before too many people get hurt are likely to be disappointed, because European politicians refuse to admit defeat. Greece now stands on the brink of a sovereign default. Over the last few months, the slump in the Greek economy [...]

THE man who the polls suggest will be the next French president, François Hollande, claims that finance is his “real adversary” in the coming election. Britain has just stripped the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland of his knighthood. Even Newt Gingrich is attacking the “vulture capitalists” [...]

Conservatives are by nature optimists. They are intensely focused on retaking the White House and the Senate. But what if, in that optimism, they are missing a growing threat? That threat is to the House of Representatives. Republicans claimed a sweeping victory there in 2010, a win that stopped President [...]

President Obama is obsessed with green energy as a terrier is obsessed with a bone. He digs the issue up time and time again with a single-mindedness that is remarkable in contemporary politics. Last week, during his State of the Union address, he gnawed on that policy again, offering it [...]

In 1789, the political price for our federal constitution included a bailout of the 13 indebted states. But it was by refusing to bail out the states a second time in the 1840s that the United States preserved its federal system, with substantial fiscal independence for state governments. Facing a [...]

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: “The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!” I gather that Americans prefer something [...]

The political strategy behind Obamanomics was always simple: Call for “stimulus” to rescue the economy, run up the debt with the biggest spending blitz in 60 years, and then when the deficit explodes call for higher taxes. The Congressional Budget Office annual review released yesterday shows this is all on [...]