Bruce Bartlett

Everybody seems to be worried about manufacturing these days. All the Democratic presidential candidates condemn the practice of “outsourcing” — laying off manufacturing workers and buying their output more cheaply from China. This is not surprising,...

For the last year or two, it has been fashionable to ridicule the idea of a “New Economy,” which underlay the stock market boom of the late 1990s. However, last week’s productivity report shows that the New Economy is alive and kicking. The original...

In recent weeks, George W. Bush has started to come in for the first meaningful criticism from mainstream conservatives during his presidency. While nascent, it could become the only real barrier to his re-election next year unless dealt with quickly. To be sure,...

Largely unbeknownst to the general public, the bond market has been collapsing in recent weeks. For some odd reason, the liberal media have failed to trumpet this news as proof that President Bush’s economics policies have failed. It may be because the reason is...

Recently, I discussed new IRS data showing that the share of total income going to the richest 400 individuals has increased. However, income is an imprecise measure of well-being. That is better measured by wealth. A new study by the Federal Reserve sheds important...

In the old days, miners brought canaries down into the tunnels to detect methane. The birds were more sensitive to the deadly gas and worked as an early warning system. When they died, it was time to get out. For conservatives, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts...

With federal budget deficits rising, pressure is on once again to enact a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. On June 25, a discharge petition was initiated to force a vote in the House on H.J. Res. 22, the latest in a long line of legislative efforts to...

On June 26, readers of The New York Times saw this headline at the top of page one: “Very Richest’s Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show.” One would have thought that important news was being broken. But in fact, the reporter, Pulitzer Prize...

The International Monetary Fund made an important appointment last week, naming Raghuram G. Rajan of the University of Chicago as its new chief economist. In this position, he will oversee all of the IMF’s economic research and have a great deal to say about its...

One of the hottest documents circulating around Washington today is a highly technical, statistics-laden, 131-page paper by Hoover Institution economist Michael Boskin. First reported by Jim McTague in Barron’s on June 16, it estimates that the taxation of...

On June 24, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meets to set monetary policy. The conventional wisdom — which is almost always accurate in this area — is that the FOMC will cut the federal funds interest rate by at least 25 basis...

On May 29, London’s Financial Times reported some startling news about the U.S. national debt. Instead of being about $3.5 trillion, as commonly understood, it was actually $44 trillion, according to a suppressed Treasury Department report by economists Kent...

This Friday, June 6, marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most important political/economic events in American history: Proposition 13. This initiative, which was approved by the voters of California on this date in 1978, sparked a “tax revolt” that...

In the early hours of May 23, the House and Senate both approved H.R. 2, a bill that reduces tax rates on wages, dividends and capital gains, among other things. The following day, before the legislation had even been signed into law, The New York Times pronounced it...

The Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times has engendered more commentary than any similar press scandal I can recall. Although in substance, the scandals involving Janet Cooke at The Washington Post, Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit at The New Republic, and Mike...

It is often said that the legislation process is like watching sausage being made: disgusting. What is left off this analogy, however, is that sausage can be very tasty. We have just seen a good example of tasty sausage being made in the tax area. Although the process...