Home/Tax Policy

How (Not) To Fix Social Security

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Moreno recently proposed lifting the Social Security wage cap to address the program’s pending insolvency. It’s the lazy solution (i.e., throw more money at a problem, declare victory, move on) and also the wrong approach.

Tax expert (and friend of the podcast) George Callas has an excellent writeup on this, along with his thoughts on what Congress should actually be considering.

Nixing the cap would impose a massive marginal tax increase (12.4 percent) on wages above the current $184,500 threshold. That increase would come on top of existing federal, state, and Medicare taxes, and apply …

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2026-09-10T15:15:39+00:00September 10, 2026|

US Best for Workers

If you’re looking for a Canadian-themed joke this Labor Day, look past Ryan Reynolds blaming the 1980s on the Cuban Missile Crisis — was he drunk? — and focus instead on senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s claim that if “you want to achieve the American Dream, well, you should move to Canada because it’s twice as likely there.”

That argument is so laughably wrong, even the Canadians disagree with it. A 2024 study by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute compared the per capita income for the Canadian provinces and US states and found the Canadians are a little behind:

Only one …

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2026-09-07T18:59:59+00:00September 7, 2026|

The Expense Cycle

Critics of last year’s tax bill are citing the decline in corporate tax receipts as evidence that the bill was too generous to Wall Street. True, corporate tax collections are down…

Receipts from corporate income taxes totaled $452 billion in 2025, which was lower than their 2024 total of $530 billion…CBO expects corporate tax receipts to decline further in 2026, to $404 billion (or 1.3 percent of GDP).

…even as corporate profits are up:

Profits are booming at America’s biggest companies—and their leaders say that likely won’t change soon. From Target and J.M. Smucker to farm-equipment maker Deere, companies spanning the breadth of the U.S. …

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2026-09-02T18:17:46+00:00September 2, 2026|

Revisiting the Myth of Corporate Decline

In 2019 we dismantled the claim that the corporate sector was withering away and that those pesky pass-throughs were to blame. Seven years on, the numbers have only made our case stronger.

Corporate profits hit $4.42 trillion last quarter on an annualized basis, while their after-tax profits reached 12.4 percent of GDP, the second-highest reading in decades.  C corps aren’t going away; they are consolidating and getting larger.

Which is why we continue to focus on the need for balance between public companies and private ones, and how the tax code’s treatment of each determines whether Main Street can …

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2026-08-13T19:11:32+00:00August 13, 2026|

Who You Calling Progressive?  

One of the of the more entertaining aspects of today’s election news is the insistence on branding Abdul El-Sayed, the hard-left winner of yesterday’s Michigan Democratic Senate primary, a mere “progressive.” Meanwhile, his more traditionally progressive opponent, Haley Stevens, has been recast as a “moderate.” More moderate than El-Sayed, certainly, but…

With that as a conversation starter, here are some take-aways from yesterday’s remarkable primary election.

The Goal Posts Have Shifted

The most obvious take-away is how the goal posts have shifted on what counts as “mainstream” these days. The New Republic published this eye-opening piece just yesterday about how Senator John …

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2026-08-05T23:12:00+00:00August 5, 2026|