According to all indications, the President will use tonight's State of the Union to hit on economic themes.  Look for exhortations to Congress to pass the payroll tax cut extension and other Obama Administration proposals.  With the head of the IMF now talking about a "1930's moment" in Europe, there are clearly some short term economic issues to be addressed.  But on the long term issues, what I expect to hear tonight is an expanded variation of the following: We need to increase our investments...

Many years ago, I was the staffer for a Senate subcommittee that had jurisdiction over government data collection. When I would visit the Chairman's home state (which staffers do a lot), I would be called upon to explain to people, mostly farmers, why they needed to fill out all this government paperwork. Why did the government need to collect all this information? It was just a useless nuisance, they would complain. Fast forward 25 years to this story in the New York Times - "Agriculture Department...

  In yesterday's posting, I cited Rob Atkinson's new report on tax reform.  In that report, he argues that there is no evidence of the claim that tax incentives automatically lead to unproductive over investments in the favored sectors.  For example, some investment tax credits may actually boost productivity because of an underlying under investment in certain productivity raising activities.  I am prepared to admit that some tax incentives lead to economic distortions.  For example, I'm not...

Here is an interesting idea from my friend Rob Atkinson at ITIF: a one-size-fits-all tax code is not one-size-fit-all.  In a new report, (U.S. Corporate Tax Reform: Groupthink or Rational Debate?), he points out that the push for tax simplification will actually harm economic competitiveness. The current thinking in Washington is that the tax code impedes economic competitiveness because of high tax rates.  In order to lower rates, the tax code should be "simplified", i.e. eliminate many tax...