Is there a penalty for bad reporting?  This week’s WSJ article entitled “The ‘Buy, Borrow and Die’ Wealth Strategy Has Become a $5 Trillion Market” makes a strong case that there should be. Here’s the lede:

Buy, borrow and die is a mantra of the rich. They love to take out loans against stock they own, so they don’t have to sell it when they want to buy other things such as mansions, yachts and movie studios.

Lots to unpack here. Start with the label. “Buy, Borrow and Die” is a misnomer.  The phrase describes a supposed strategy employed …

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This recent note from Oren Cass over at American Compass caught our eye:

Kim Clausing and I disagree on tariffs and have enjoyed debating each other a number of times, but we agree on this: There is a smarter way to tax the rich (Financial Times). Tax capital, folks. This statistic, especially, fascinated me: “Despite having the world’s most successful public companies, the US raises much less from corporate tax (about 2 per cent of GDP less) than other rich countries.”

Sure, it’s a fascinating stat. It’s also entirely bogus, as it ignores the taxes paid by 95 percent of …

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A decade ago, Treasury published a paper on effective tax rates that was worth a hard look. As our write-up showed, the headlines generated by the paper were not justified by its actual findings.

We’re republishing that response today because the original Treasury paper is back in the news – it’s cited in a recent NYU-Hamilton paper on pass-through businesses and two of its authors also co-authored the “Everywhere Millionaire,” a book which – as we explained the other day – is generating similarly misguided news coverage today.

Here’s what we wrote in 2015.

New Treasury Effective Rate …

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