Category Archives: Tax Policy

WSJ: ProPublica’s Plan for a Poorer America

A federal wealth tax would only make it harder for people with big dreams to make them a reality. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon June 16, 2021 6:16 pm ET ProPublica’s “blockbuster” story showing that the wealthy “pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if...
Read more

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 Biden...
Read more

WSJ-Biden Aims at Profit, Hits Workers

The 2017 corporate tax cuts triggered the blue-collar wage boom. Higher rates would reverse it. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon April 6, 2021 6:18 pm ET The Biden administration has proposed an array of corporate tax increases with a goal of raising some $1.33 trillion over the next 10 years. That’s three...
Read more

WSJ: Bidenomics Failed the First Time

Claims that he’ll spur growth ignore that his policies are a repeat of the stagnant Obama years. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon Nov. 1, 2020 2:06 pm ET No candidate for president with a legacy of 36 years in the Senate and eight in the West Wing should need an economic projection...
Read more

WSJ: Wealthy Americans Already Pay Their Share

Arguments to the contrary spurn or wildly distort statistics and cherry-pick anecdotal examples. By Phil Gramm and John F. Early Feb. 25, 2020 7:19 pm ET Even amid a freewheeling presidential primary, Democrats are of one mind when it comes to taxation: Rich Americans are not paying their fair share. Congressional...
Read more

WSJ: How to Balance the Budget—Again

A GOP Congress and a Democratic president struck an unlikely deal in 1997. It succeeded. By Michael Solon Aug. 4, 2019 5:48 pm ET The budget deal between the president, the Democratic House and the Republican Senate eliminated the risk of debt default, government shutdown and a spending sequester for...
Read more

WSJ: The Myth of American Inequality

Taxes and transfers in the U.S. put its income distribution in line with its large developed peers. By Phil Gramm and John F. Early Aug. 9, 2018 6:51 p.m. ET America is the world’s most prosperous large country, but critics often attempt to tarnish that title by claiming income is distributed...
Read more

WSJ: How Income Equality Helped Trump

Working Americans sense that taxes and transfers now leave them little better off than those who work less. By Phil Gramm and Robert B. Ekelund Jr. Frenzied rhetoric about income inequality was a larger theme in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign than in any previous American election. When the ballots were...
Read more

Trump’s Trade Threats Are Hurting Growth

Tariff tensions promote economic uncertainty, which in turn inhibits business investment. By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon Economic uncertainty and prosperity are sworn enemies—when uncertainty reigns, prosperity fades. Uncertainty undermines prosperity by sapping investor and consumer confidence, choking off private investment, and suppressing consumer spending. The depression that followed the 1929...
Read more