tax cuts | Tom Mullen Talks Freedom

recession-coming The stock markets sold off on Friday, and financial media headlines were dominated by an inverted yield curve, a key recession indicator for the past several decades. Was the selloff just a pullback as equity prices consolidate before heading for new highs? Or is this the top of a dead cat bounce after the December market meltdown?

Economic indicators are somewhat mixed. Unemployment remains low at 3.8 percent, although it is always important to consider what kinds of jobs people are doing, what they are producing, and why. Unemployment is always low just before a bubble pops, as monetary inflation leads to unsustainable expansion.

Meanwhile, February saw a nearly subterranean jobs report, and December’s much-ballyhooed number was revised downward from 312,000 jobs to just 227,000. Holiday retail sales, reported as “heating up” during December, ended up declining by 1.2 percent, the biggest drop since 2009.

That a recession is coming is a certainty. The question is when. And whether it hits in 2019 or 2020, you can bet it will take center stage in the political arena, with Democratic presidential hopefuls climbing over each other to blame President Trump and the Republicans. The GOP will find it hard to fight back after taking full ownership of the tail end of this ten-year, inflation-fueled bubble.

As ridiculous as we free-market types always find it, a recession during a Republican presidential administration is always characterized by our opponents as an indictment of capitalism, even though the business cycle is driven much more by monetary policy than anything presidents of either party do. And the Federal Reserve is not a capitalist institution. It’s an economic central planner Karl Marx considered a vital part of moving society towards communism.

Read the rest at Foundation for Economic Freedom…

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

John McCain’s confirmation he’d vote against the House tax reform bill as currently proposed means Republicans won’t be able to lower taxes – for some people – nearly as quickly as most of them want to. In all, three Republican senators have indicated their unwillingness to vote for the plan, meaning Republicans would need Democratic votes to get it through.

As Democratic support is unlikely, the American public will have to endure several weeks or months of grandstanding, proposed amendments, and further neutering of any real benefit to taxpayers. The worst thing about these rituals is they are always largely a debate over absurdities. Here are just a few of the perennial favorites.

Over Ten Years

Both sides of any tax and spending debate use the “over ten years” canard. Those politicians claiming their plan will “balance the budget” claim their bill will do so in ten years, always after increasing spending this year. Those opposing the same plan will pick out spending lines they don’t like, whether increases, decreases, or new spending, and use the ten-year canard to make the impact seem bigger than it is.

For example, if Republicans proposed cutting $100 billion from domestic spending (a mere 2.5% of the overall federal budget), Democrats would wail Republicans were depriving the public of $1 trillion of desperately needed services. Republicans would claim they were saving taxpayers $1 trillion. Neither side would acknowledge the $1 trillion is a rather small percentage of the ten-year federal budget.

In reality, Congress has no power to pass any bill that can’t be changed in as little as two years. Spending bills are debated every year. So, anything politicians say and the media parrot regarding a spending bill’s effects over the next ten years is largely hot air. All that really matters is what their proposals will do next year. And that news is virtually never good.

Read the rest at Foundation for Economic Education…