Alex Benson

This is the final installment of a 3 part series. Conservatives, too, are not without fault. Take for instance the talking point that massive low-skilled immigration into the United States will depress wages for Americans and harm the overall economy. The argument for restricting immigration for this reason is the same one used to justify […]

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Please read part 1 here. Take for example the apocalypse to end all apocalypses (literally, in that if the more radical projections are to be believed it is already too late to stave off Armageddon): climate change. From the outset, it should be noted that to […]

In the era of social media and 24-hour news cycles, every story is “breaking,” and everything is apocalyptic. We tweet about how President Trump has already destroyed America, or, alternatively, about how political correctness is one step away from plunging the country over the cliff and into the proverbial “thousand years of darkness.” Ironically, though, […]

The US Treasury yield curve — the graphical representation of the relationship between bond maturities and their yields — is flattening. Some maturities, such as yields on two to five-year bonds, has already inverted. An inversion of the two and the ten-year maturities, recognized in the financial world as a warning sign of coming recession, […]

In lieu of a successful vote on a bipartisan proposal by Senators Lee and Sanders to end Congressional support for US military involvement in the Yemeni civil war, Republican leadership attached language supporting US involvement in the conflict to the 2018 farm bill. The relevant language of the attached resolution actually goes so far as […]

Much has been made in the past week — on conservative talk radio and among the rest of the punditry — of the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert on an “abortion case” in which two lower federal courts had ruled that states violated federal law when they terminated Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood affiliates. […]

Part two can be read here. Furthermore, high corporate tax rates are negatively correlated with economic growth. That is to say, higher corporate tax rates, ceteris paribus, are negatively correlated with economic growth.  The leading empirical research in the area of growth and corporate taxation estimates that cutting U.S. corporate taxes by 10 percentage points […]

Part one can be read here. Factors Weighing in Favor of Repeal The nominal rate structure of the corporate income tax in the USA was extremely uncompetitive prior to the TCJA. (The lower rate that followed in the wake of the 2017 tax cut act makes the country more competitive, but we still have a […]

In December of last year, Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The legislation, among other things, cut the top marginal rate of the corporate income tax from 35% to 21%. This was a huge step forward in making USA competitive on the world stage. But it did not […]

Detroit-based US automaker General Motors has announced that it plans to close five plants in the United States and Canada, as well as eliminate 15% of its salaried workforce. The move is a part of a larger cost-cutting plan aimed at restructuring its production away from passenger cars and toward SUVs and trucks. Demand has […]

Part one can be read here. The record-keeping requirements of paying taxes in cryptocurrency would therefore be immense. Every time you transfer cryptocurrency, you trigger a gain or a loss on that asset. However, the consequences of failing to account for that gain or loss are more severe when the trigger is payment to a […]

This past week, State Treasurer Josh Mandel partnered with Bitpay to make Ohio the first state to accept cryptocurrency for business taxes. Treasurer Mandel told CNBC the move was designed “to plant the flag in Ohio as a national and international leader in blockchain technology,” adding that it increases “options and ease” for taxpayers and […]