by admin | Aug 8, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 Louis Brandeis once said, “I abhor averages.” After reading Average Is Over (Dutton Press) by Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, I’d concur with Brandeis: if the average American’s future is anywhere close to Cowen’s...
by admin | Aug 1, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 100 years ago this week, Austria declared war on Serbia and World War I–the Great War, the war to end all wars–began. Of course, World War I, despite its enormity and large death toll, was not the war to end… Source:...
by admin | Jul 29, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 “If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven’t cut taxes enough.” (Milton Friedman) During the federal debt ceiling showdowns, ideas about spending cuts often came to a stalemate because Democrats insisted on offsetting...
by admin | Jul 21, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 Alabama’s tax code is one of the most regressive in the country, which means middle-income, lower-income, and poor people contribute a far greater share of their income to state revenues than the wealthiest Alabamians. According to a 2013 study,...
by admin | Jul 18, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 Thanks to our Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Parker Griffith, making it a campaign issue, there are few questions I’ve been asked more often in recent months than the question of “What do you think of a state lottery?” Griffith is...
by admin | Jul 9, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 A media-savvy friend of mine once told me that there’s no surer way to turn off readers than a chart or a presentation of data. He’s probably right, but here goes a post on basic pension arithmetic anyway…Example 1 You borrow…...
by admin | Jul 3, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 Tomorrow we celebrate the 238th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, which was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. (John Adams, by the way, thought it would be July 2nd that Americans would celebrate as an “epoch day” in history...
by Scott Beaulier | Jun 26, 2014 | Uncategorized
Tonight…a wrap-up of this week’s primary elections, including the races for governor and legislative and congressional seats. Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard of Auburn discusses his win and what he calls the nastiest campaign he’s ever had to endure....
by admin | Jun 26, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 Defined benefit (DB) pension plans like Social Security and The Teachers’ Retirement System of Alabama (TRS) are designed to provide a promised set of benefits to participants. The benefits are based on factors that include a person’s age,...
by admin | Jun 20, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 The desire to help the poor is an understandable one. Almost all of us want to do so, and even those with the most negative views about the welfare state probably agree that there is a strong moral duty to help… Source:...
by admin | Jun 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 President Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has done its best to hurt kids and inner-city minorities around the country. By attacking school choice and state-level experimentation in public education, the DOJ is making sure another generation of...
by admin | May 27, 2014 | Uncategorized
By sbeaulier77 As the Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) continue along denying we have a problem, other states keep passing us by. As Eileen Norcross noted in her work, Michigan reformed back in the 1990s, and the savings to taxpayers has been… Source:...
