Stephen Moore from Creators Syndicate

Shortly before Milton Friedman’s death in 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing him over dinner in San Francisco. The last question I asked him was: What are the three things we have to do to make America more prosperous?

His answer I have never forgotten: “First, allow universal school choice; second, expand free trade; third and most importantly, cut government spending.” That was long before Barack Obama and Joe Biden came along.

There aren’t too many problems in America that can’t be traced back to the growth of big and incompetent government.

Updated: Tue Jan 07, 2025

Shortly before Milton Friedman’s death in 2006, I had the privilege of interviewing him over dinner in San Francisco. The last question I asked him was: What are the three things we have to do to make America more prosperous?

His answer I have never forgotten: “First, allow universal school choice; second, expand free trade; third and most importantly, cut government spending.” That was long before Barack Obama and Joe Biden came along.

There aren’t too many problems in America that can’t be traced back to the growth of big and incompetent government.

It is notable that the two big bursts of inflation during modern times both occurred when government spending exploded. The first was the gigantic expansion of the Lyndon B. Johnson “war on poverty” welfare state in the 1970s with prices nearly doubling. Second was the post-COVID-19 spending blitz in the last year of Donald Trump’s first term, followed by the Biden $6 trillion spending spree, with the Consumer Price Index sprinting from 1.5% to 9.1%.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I doubt it.

The connection between government flab and the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar is obvious. In both cases the Washington spending blitz was funded by Federal Reserve money printing. The helicopter money caused prices to surge. (I still find it laughable that 11 Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote in the New York Times in 2021 that the Biden multitrillion-dollar spending spree wouldn’t cause inflation. Were they on hallucinogenic drugs?)

The avalanche of federal spending hasn’t stopped even though the COVID-19 pandemic ended over a year ago. We are three months into the 2025 fiscal year and on pace to spend an all-time-high $7 trillion and borrow $2 trillion. If we stay on this course, the federal budget could reach $10 trillion over the next decade.

This road to financial perdition cannot stand. It risks blowing up the Trump presidency.

Upon entering office, Trump should on day one call for a package of up to $500 billion of rescissions — money the last Congress appropriated but has not been spent yet. Canceling the green energy subsidies alone could save nearly $100 billion. Why are we still spending money on COVID-19?

We could save tens of billions of dollars by ending corporate welfare programs — such as the wheelbarrows full of tax dollars thrown at companies like Intel in the CHIPS Act. The Elon Musk Department of Government Efficiency is already identifying low-hanging fruit that needs to be cut from the tree.

Along with extending the Trump tax cut of 2017, this erasure of bloated federal spending is critical for economic revival and for reversing the income losses to the middle class under Biden.

This is especially urgent because the curse of inflation is NOT over. Since the Fed started cutting interest rates in October, commodity prices are up nearly 5%, and mortgage rates have again hit 7%, in part because the combination of cheap money and government expansion is a toxic economic brew — as history teaches us.

Nothing could suck the oxygen and excitement out of the new Trump presidency more than a resumption of inflation at the grocery store and the gas pump. Trump’s record-high approval rating will sink overnight if the cost of everything starts rising again.

Cutting spending won’t be easy. The resistance won’t just come from Bernie Sanders Democrats. He will have to convince lawmakers in his own party — many of whom are already defending Green New Deal pork projects in their districts.

Trump should borrow a line from Nancy Reagan: Just say no — to runaway government spending. Say yes to what Friedman titled his famous book: “Capitalism and Freedom.”

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

The media have been playing up the “civil war” inside the GOP between what Politico calls the “MAGA Republicans and Big Tech.” The restrictionists in the party want fewer visas, and the pro-growth wing wants more.

This past weekend, President-elect Donald Trump announced his support for expanding immigrant worker visas. He told the New York Post:

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.”

Updated: Tue Dec 31, 2024

The media have been playing up the “civil war” inside the GOP between what Politico calls the “MAGA Republicans and Big Tech.” The restrictionists in the party want fewer visas, and the pro-growth wing wants more.

This past weekend, President-elect Donald Trump announced his support for expanding immigrant worker visas. He told the New York Post:

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.”

It wasn’t clear whether he was talking about special visas for seasonal workers or high-tech (H1b) visas. But he has the strategy exactly right: legal immigration, yes; illegal immigration, no.

The evidence is overwhelming that LEGAL immigrants are assets to the economy.

The most recent 2024 report by the Congressional Budget Office on the economic and fiscal impact of immigrants finds that immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in federal services, thus “reducing the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the period 2024-2034.”

Despite some traditional nativist concerns that immigrants “take jobs from American workers,” the most recent meta-study published in 2020 by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, on balance, immigrants are “job creators, not job takers,” as former AOL CEO Steve Case put it. That is because immigrants today as always have high rates of starting businesses, fill niches in the workforce, and create jobs with their purchases of American goods and services.

The nonpartisan American Immigration Council recently found that 45% of American Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants and their children.

The businesses they create are not just in the tech sector. They include retail (Kohl’s), telecommunications (Verizon, AT&T), finance (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup), pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, Moderna), media (News Corp, Fox), transportation (Boeing, JetBlue) and petroleum (Phillips 66, Occidental Petroleum), to name a few. And let’s not forget Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX.

The revenues of these first- and second-generation immigrant companies exceed that of any other nation.

Musk, who will co-chair the Department of Government Efficiency commission, says he thinks we should double visas for skilled immigrants “yesterday.” He added: “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low. … If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”

It is clear that hardworking and entrepreneurial immigrants in combination with good old Yankee ingenuity is one of the greatest comparative advantages the United States has over nearly every other nation in the world — especially China.

I can’t think of a better way to make America great again.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Here’s my wish list for the incoming Trump administration to make America healthy and prosperous and great again in 2025.

1. Slash Job-Killing Regulations

Updated: Tue Dec 24, 2024

Here’s my wish list for the incoming Trump administration to make America healthy and prosperous and great again in 2025.

1. Slash Job-Killing Regulations

The regulatory state is a $2 trillion tax on the American economy. We all want worker safety, a clean environment and consumer protections, but in too many cases the costs of regulations far outweigh the societal benefits. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to slash 10 rules for every new rule. Just do it, Mr. President.

2. Make the Trump Tax Cuts Permanent

As JFK, Ronald Reagan and others have proven throughout history, lower tax rates lead to more growth, more investment and more jobs. The Trump tax cuts meant that a typical family of four earning $75,000 a year saw their tax bill fall by half — a benefit valued at more than $2,000. And the corporate tax rate fell from 35% — the highest in the world — to 21%, bringing jobs and capital to America. Trump has promised to make all these tax cuts permanent. Why? Because they worked almost exactly as we anticipated they would.

3. Replace Welfare With Work

Growth will require more able-bodied Americans getting off welfare and into jobs. Welfare — which includes cash assistance, public housing, food stamps, disability payments, unemployment benefits and Medicaid — needs to be a hand up, not a handout.

4. Use America’s Abundant Natural Resources

America has well more than $50 trillion of natural resources that are accessible with existing drilling and mining technologies. This is a vast storehouse of wealth that far surpasses what any other nation is endowed with. We can use the royalty payments and leases to reduce our national debt while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

5. Cut Medical Costs by Demanding Health Care Price Transparency

One of many ways to bring health care costs down to consumers (and taxpayers, who pay half the costs) is to require hospitals, pharmacies, doctors and health clinics to list prices for what they are charging. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity estimates that $1 trillion to $2 trillion could be reduced from health care costs, with no reduction in the quality of care, by allowing consumers to shop around on the internet for the best price — just as we do when we buy groceries, a home or a car. This will foster free market competition and lower prices.

6. Allow School Choice for All Families

Test scores in America have been plummeting. Kids are graduating from high school — if at all — without even being able to read the diploma. America no longer ranks in the top 10 in many academic achievement ratings.

A child can get a better education at HALF the cost in the Catholic school system and in many charters.

Trump has endorsed universal school choice for ALL children regardless of income or ethnicity or race. This is the civil rights issue of our time.

7. Implement a Pro-America Immigration Policy

Trump’s committed to securing our border, but we also need legal immigrants through a merit-based immigration system. This visa system would select immigrants based on their skills, talents, investment capital, English language ability and education level. These characteristics all presage success in America.

8. Revive America’s Great Cities

Our once-great cities in America — from New York to Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco to Seattle — have come to look like war zones. Crime has run rampant. Businesses and people and capital are fleeing and leaving the poorest Americans — mostly minorities — stranded with tragically limited opportunities other than working at Walmart or McDonald’s for minimum wage. Since 2020, our major cities have lost nearly 1 million residents. And tens of thousands of businesses.

Trump wants to revitalize our cities and abandoned rural areas through deregulation, reduction in tax rates, changes in zoning policies and infrastructure investments.

9. Pull the U.S. Out of the Paris Climate Change Treaty and Other Anti-America Agreements

We must end American participation in globalist treaties that hurt America most. This includes the Paris Climate Accords — a treaty with which most other nations have failed to comply, yet which places huge burdens on American companies and workers. Trump also has pledged to end global taxation — such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s global minimum tax. Do we even need a United Nations?

10. Finally, Drain the Swamp

There is a reason why three of the five wealthiest counties in America are in or around Washington, D.C. Washington is getting rich at the expense of the rest of us. Fewer than 10% of overpaid federal workers (of which there are more than 2 million) are working full time in the office even though COVID-19 ended three years ago. These are swamp employees that often get paid $150,000 or more a year. Fire them if they don’t show up. And relocate federal agencies in other cities.

These are admittedly bold aspirations for an economic transformation toward freedom and free enterprise. But the one person who can get it done is Trump.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

One of the highest priorities for the incoming Trump administration should be to end the Democrats’ weaponization of powerful government agencies against taxpayers and businesses they don’t like. Nowhere has this mission been more pernicious than the party-line vote to fund the IRS with nearly $80 billion and hire tens of thousands of new tax snoops.

By the way, according to the IRS press office, the additional audits have so far raised less than $2 billion, far less than the additional expenditures. So how is this program “paying for itself”?

This was never about seeking tax fairness as liberals claimed. It was about unleashing an aggressive, permanent and unchecked enforcement assault on U.S. taxpayers to rake in more tax dollars to pay for liberals’ political agenda. The American people voted to end such madness, and the IRS should now act accordingly and immediately by ignoring the Biden administration’s 11th-hour efforts to ram through a slew of costly new rules and regulations as they now head toward the exit.

Updated: Tue Dec 17, 2024

One of the highest priorities for the incoming Trump administration should be to end the Democrats’ weaponization of powerful government agencies against taxpayers and businesses they don’t like. Nowhere has this mission been more pernicious than the party-line vote to fund the IRS with nearly $80 billion and hire tens of thousands of new tax snoops.

By the way, according to the IRS press office, the additional audits have so far raised less than $2 billion, far less than the additional expenditures. So how is this program “paying for itself”?

This was never about seeking tax fairness as liberals claimed. It was about unleashing an aggressive, permanent and unchecked enforcement assault on U.S. taxpayers to rake in more tax dollars to pay for liberals’ political agenda. The American people voted to end such madness, and the IRS should now act accordingly and immediately by ignoring the Biden administration’s 11th-hour efforts to ram through a slew of costly new rules and regulations as they now head toward the exit.

Progressive leaders made wildly erroneous claims that a supersized IRS would raise nearly $1 trillion over 10 years from stepped-up enforcement against higher-income earners and businesses. And they attempted to justify their proposals by broadly portraying entrepreneurs, small businesses, family-owned private enterprises and the wealthy as tax cheats. The entire exercise was designed to harass lawful taxpayers and threaten them as guilty parties until they could prove themselves innocent.

Fortunately, most voters saw their efforts for what they were: a liberal fantasy grab of other peoples’ money and an attempt to assert greater control over their livelihoods. Democrat leaders did not help themselves by immediately oversteering the car. This included efforts to have the IRS spy on personal bank accounts and require income reporting for basic Venmo payments among friends, as well as punitive measures on those whose incomes are derived from tips or numerous other types of transactions.

Another target for IRS harassment has been business partnerships. Such businesses are one of the most common and practical ways to structure private enterprises of all sizes. A simple analogy might be when one party owns an available tractor and another has available land, and they go into business together to farm the land. All told, there are an estimated 4.5 million business partnerships in America. Collectively, these partnerships generate more than $12 trillion in revenue and employ millions of U.S. workers.

Yet the IRS, before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office, is now stealthily attempting to implement new rules that threaten the future viability of such partnerships. These proposed changes to the tax code impact what is known as “basis shifting” — a routine and legal practice that business partners use to adjust the tax basis of their respective assets. In short, the proposed rules would deliberately embed uncertainty and subjective IRS interpretations of how taxable assets are treated when one transfers or sells their interest in a business partnership. Basically, the opposite of tax fairness.

Meanwhile, the multibillion-dollar bounty the Biden administration claimed their newly armed IRS would secure through added enforcement and new tax rules has completely failed to materialize. The IRS recently disclosed that just $1 billion had been recovered since their aggressive campaign went into effect two years ago, and there is no way of knowing if that would have occurred with or without it. How ironic and sad is it for taxpayers to learn that the vast amount of the $80 billion Democrats awarded to the IRS to recover or find new “savings” is instead on pace to serve as a massive cost to the U.S. Treasury?

The last thing voters now want is for the IRS to impose any more costly last-minute tax changes that will make problems even worse for taxpayers, workers and employers. Accordingly, the Biden team and the IRS should put down their pencils. And if they persist with these fourth-quarter rule changes, the Trump team should be prepared to immediately repeal them in January.

That would bring real joy to America.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Buckle your seatbelts because President-elect Donald Trump has ignited a worldwide revolt against the arrogance of global elites.

We are entering a brand-new era of rebellion — man against the self-serving, out-of-touch political machines that ignore the will of the governed.

Everywhere.

Updated: Tue Dec 10, 2024

Buckle your seatbelts because President-elect Donald Trump has ignited a worldwide revolt against the arrogance of global elites.

We are entering a brand-new era of rebellion — man against the self-serving, out-of-touch political machines that ignore the will of the governed.

Everywhere.

Look around.

The world is a mess. Entrenched political leaders and parties are being tumultuously evicted in Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia. In Britain, the Conservative Party grew government, lost its moorings and was chased from office, only to be replaced by an economically incompetent Labour Party that came into office, raised taxes on everything and everyone, and has plunged the economy into recession. France just ousted its prime minister for the first time in decades, thrusting the “country into chaos,” as CNN put it.

Germany’s government is also on the verge of collapse. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been forced to request a vote of confidence later this month. Good luck with that. The Associated Press reports “his three-party coalition” government collapsed last month.

In South Korea, the president invoked martial law, and now the citizens are demanding his impeachment.

In Japan, “the party (that) has ruled the country almost continuously” since 1955, according to BBC, was voted out in October.

Mexico and Canada have elected leftist boobs who are losing support by the day.

Way ahead of the pack is Argentina, where the “shock capitalist” President Javier Milei, who says “I despise the state government,” won election a year ago and is an overnight international hero for his chainsaw approach to shrinking big government.

Now is the hour of the entire world’s discontent.

Why are the dominoes of government tumbling so suddenly?

One word: Trump. The whole world has watched with fascination and even admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America. The masses around the world are screaming: We want Trumpism here in our country. They seem to be saying: Make Britain great again. Make Germany and Japan and Korea and Canada great again.

The politicians, bureaucrats and elite academics are horrified. They should be.

The anger at the political class is boiling over with scalding resentment against government incompetence, fiscal mismanagement and statist directives that snatch away basic freedoms.

They have commanded us that you can’t have a gas stove or a gas car or a lawnmower or an air conditioner. Parents can’t send their kids to good schools.

My, how the tables have turned. The politicians who profess to care so much about the working classes are now despised by the voters.

The masses around the world are seeing the bounce in America’s step in the wake of the Trump election. The Trumpian message of prosperity, efficiency, fairness, home rule and love of country.

It’s a virtual certainty that voters everywhere are going to demand common-sense Trumpian policies in their own towns and countries. As Trump has said, every leader should put their own country first. Global government is dead for now.

It’s a grassroots power-to-the-people movement — something the Left once believed in.

I wouldn’t want to be Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping or French President Emmanuel Macron or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or Scholz, right now. The Trumpians are coming for you.

Good riddance.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Hard to believe it was just four years ago that Joe Biden was elected with a promise to unite the country. After the misery of COVID-19 deaths and lockdowns and the riots in the streets of major cities, Americans WANTED to be united by a unifying national purpose.

Alas, it never happened. Instead, Biden and his leftist allies were drunk with power and swerved the Democratic Party even further to the left. This alienated half the country, with a ruinous and unpopular progressive agenda on every issue, from running up massive debts to rampant inflation to transgenderism to electric vehicle mandates.

The country was only further torn asunder.

Updated: Tue Dec 03, 2024

Hard to believe it was just four years ago that Joe Biden was elected with a promise to unite the country. After the misery of COVID-19 deaths and lockdowns and the riots in the streets of major cities, Americans WANTED to be united by a unifying national purpose.

Alas, it never happened. Instead, Biden and his leftist allies were drunk with power and swerved the Democratic Party even further to the left. This alienated half the country, with a ruinous and unpopular progressive agenda on every issue, from running up massive debts to rampant inflation to transgenderism to electric vehicle mandates.

The country was only further torn asunder.

Can Donald Trump learn from these blunders and be the president who unifies the country by embracing traditional American ideals? The Make America Great Again agenda has some rough edges for sure, but if presented right, led by a message of hope, not malice, Trump can deliver an idealistic policy that the vast majority of Americans can embrace.

The way to do this is for Trump, as we approach our 250th birthday, to strike up the theme of a New American Patriotism. This should be a red-white-and-blue message centered around a renewed appreciation and celebration of American virtue and greatness. What better way to pull the country together? It should be an extension of the Reagan message of America being a “shining city on a hill” and a “beacon of freedom” for the rest of the world.

Which we are.

For at least a generation and maybe two, our schools and our universities have denigrated America’s moral standing. We have been lectured that we should be ashamed of our nation’s past, not proud of our founding and our achievements of spreading freedom and free enterprise across the planet.

The hard left magnifies America’s failures — particularly slavery and segregation — not the magnitude of our successes and our virtue. Foreigners who visit the United States often can’t believe the extent to which our media, entertainment industry and intellectual class obsess over our moral failings.

Biden was particularly guilty of this, when he falsely accused the United States of being a systemically racist country.

Wrong, Joe.

A strong case can be made that America is today the world’s greatest and perhaps ONLY successful multiracial success story. The melting pot isn’t just a history-book fantasy. It is real. The rapid increase in interracial and intercultural marriages is making racial distinctions almost obsolete. The rapid rise in incomes of Asians, Hispanics and, to a lesser extent, Blacks should be celebrated.

Recent polling suggests that our citizens DO appreciate American greatness. The only group that DOESN’T is the ideologically isolated cultural and “highly educated” elite. The vast majority of Americans of every race and income category believe America is “the greatest country on earth.” But many white liberal elites reject this notion.

Another example: White conservatives and Hispanics soundly reject the idea that America is systemically racist. According to Pew Research Center, “about six-in-ten Black adults say racism” is a problem in America today. But it’s telling that many white liberals also believe this.

Is there still racism in America? Of course, yes. But it is not “systemic,” and the nation is becoming less racially polarized with every passing year.

America’s inventiveness, our innovation and our technological prowess, which propelled the world into the modern age and helped reduce poverty rates by 90%, are somehow sinister. Damn those fiends Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

Fortunately, these are views of a class of modern-day intellectuals who never produced anything but instead sow the seeds of miscontent and division. They certainly have the right to hold these blame-America-first ideals, but we don’t have to allow them in our classrooms to pollute the minds of our kids.

This is an extension of the Reagan metaphor of America as a “shining city on a hill” and a “beacon of freedom” for all the world. It’s truer today than ever before, and Trumponomics will make it all the more true.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

One thing Hollywood is very good at is scaring the bejesus out of Americans — even when they’re merely spreading false fears.

A famous movie in 1979 called “The China Syndrome” chronicled a nuclear power accident that could kill tens of thousands of Americans with radiation poisoning. The title came from a spooky fairy-tale scenario in which the nuclear material would melt the earth right through to its core and then all the way down to China. Despite causing few deaths, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania that year further panicked Americans about the safety of nuclear plants.

The damage to the industry was done and nearly fatal. For nearly four decades the nuclear industry failed to permit any more new nuclear plants.

Updated: Tue Nov 26, 2024

One thing Hollywood is very good at is scaring the bejesus out of Americans — even when they’re merely spreading false fears.

A famous movie in 1979 called “The China Syndrome” chronicled a nuclear power accident that could kill tens of thousands of Americans with radiation poisoning. The title came from a spooky fairy-tale scenario in which the nuclear material would melt the earth right through to its core and then all the way down to China. Despite causing few deaths, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania that year further panicked Americans about the safety of nuclear plants.

The damage to the industry was done and nearly fatal. For nearly four decades the nuclear industry failed to permit any more new nuclear plants.

That was yesterday. The time is right for a nuclear renaissance. The incoming administration, from President-elect Donald J. Trump on down, is pro-American energy independence. Nuclear power has to be part of the equation.

We need to get back to building new plants so that we have the electric power capacity for the next generation of artificial intelligence and other uses that will tax the grid beyond what it can provide. AI will use three to four times as much energy as the internet, so demand is going to spike and we will be at risk of brownouts.

Jack Spencer — an energy policy expert at the Heritage Foundation — has just published a fabulous policy manifesto, “Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation,” on how we unleash (we love that word) a nuclear power renaissance in America.

Spencer shows conclusively that “obstructive regulations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and anti-nuclear scare tactics from the left are what has inhibited this industry for decades.” It’s as if Jane Fonda (remember her in “The China Syndrome”?) were running our energy policy.

Today we get a little less than 20% of our electric power from decades-old nuclear plants that are now being retired. If we don’t build new ones, we will lose ground on our energy production at the very time we need much more capacity.

The federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on wind and solar subsidies — but these are still niche energy sources that are NOT scalable to meet our $25 trillion industrial economy’s needs. Former Vice President Al Gore and the climate change environmental groups should be all in on nuclear as a clean energy source with very minimal greenhouse gases.

If we double our nuclear power capacity over the next decade or so and allow more natural gas and oil drilling here at home, we can regain our energy dominant position. OPEC would be a toothless tiger, and the Russian war machine could be defunded.

Small reactors that can serve towns of 50,000 to 100,000 people can minimize risks of major plant accidents that could put Americans in danger.

It’s all so logical. It puts America first.

We don’t need Fonda dictating our energy policy any longer.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Earlier this year, in one of the most absurd court rulings in modern times, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated U.S. antitrust law by gaining a monopoly in the search engine markets.

In the days or weeks ahead, the courts will decide whether to break up one of America’s most iconic companies or to sell off some of its activities and products. The latest reports are that the courts may require Google to sell off its popular Chrome browser. (To whom? China?) It may also require Google to surrender other products to help erase its market lead.

With a market cap of roughly $2 trillion, Google is one of the five most profitable companies in the world. It got there by offering a search engine service FOR FREE to hundreds of millions of customers. This may be the largest benefit to consumers of any company in world history.

Updated: Tue Nov 19, 2024

Earlier this year, in one of the most absurd court rulings in modern times, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated U.S. antitrust law by gaining a monopoly in the search engine markets.

In the days or weeks ahead, the courts will decide whether to break up one of America’s most iconic companies or to sell off some of its activities and products. The latest reports are that the courts may require Google to sell off its popular Chrome browser. (To whom? China?) It may also require Google to surrender other products to help erase its market lead.

With a market cap of roughly $2 trillion, Google is one of the five most profitable companies in the world. It got there by offering a search engine service FOR FREE to hundreds of millions of customers. This may be the largest benefit to consumers of any company in world history.

Yet the courts ruled that: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” It was found guilty of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Yet the Sherman Act was meant to protect against companies that use their size and scope to RAISE prices. Google’s sin is that it produces superior products at prices that are TOO LOW. One statistic was cited as evidence of monopoly behavior: Back in 2009, Google controlled 80% of the search engine market, and today it is closer to 90%.

What was remarkable and dangerous about this decision is that the courts openly conceded that Google gained this dominant market share by making the best search engine and that it is made easily available to almost all consumers at very low costs.

How weird is this? Keeping prices low and relentlessly improving product performance is illegal because it is unfair to a company’s competitors? This is doubly absurd given that we have the Biden administration accusing companies like grocery stores of RAISING their prices. So in America today, if you raise your prices, you are a greedy profiteer, and if you lower your prices, you’re a monopolist that has to pay restitution to your less efficient competitors.

The argument for breaking up Google gets even more nonsensical when you listen to the Biden administration’s cockeyed excuses for punishing Google. The Department of Justice’s chief antitrust officer says: “This landmark decision … paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”

This is a preposterous statement. Few if any companies spend more money on product innovation and refinement than Google does. And as far as “protecting access to information for all Americans,” no company in history has opened up more access to information than Google. No other company even comes close. It has brought the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress to the fingertips of everyone with a laptop computer in a matter of a few seconds. That’s not an antitrust violation. It is a miracle of innovation that deserves our deepest appreciation.

Even worse, this lawsuit piggybacks off the hostile actions by America’s European and Chinese tech rivals, whose inferior search engines can’t compete with Google. As recourse, they want to loot tens of millions of American shareholders who invest in Google. Instead of defending an American company against foreign raiders, we have the U.S. Justice Department and federal courts giving aid to those hostile lawsuits and bolstering their legitimacy.

Can anyone imagine for a moment that a German or a Japanese or a Chinese court would be stupid enough to rule against their own domestic company that has come to dominate a globally strategic industry and has created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs for its citizens while making hundreds of billions of dollars for its own citizen shareholders? Only in America.

Many conservatives moan that Google has developed algorithms that discriminate against viewpoints and studies that have a right-leaning perspective. That’s definitely a problem, but there are many other search engines available, like Bing and DuckDuckGo, that consumers can use as alternatives to Google. We certainly don’t want the government or politicians like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren regulating what can and can’t be accessed on a private search engine platform. Even worse would be handing more business over to Chinese browsers that will clearly serve up misinformation.

Several years ago, a landmark study by economists Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Avinash Collis of Carnegie Mellon University estimated that the median U.S. user values search engines at $17,500 per year. Today, that number is easily more than $20,000 of value added for the average person with a laptop computer or a smartphone — which is nearly all of us.

This is the very definition of a gift horse to nearly all Americans. And our own government and its throng of lawyers with goofy legal theories are risking killing it.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

A few days before last week’s election, Bernie Sanders issued a dire warning to voters: “If Donald Trump is elected, the struggle against climate change is over.”

He had that right.

Climate change fanaticism was effectively on the ballot last week. The green energy agenda was decisively defeated.

Updated: Tue Nov 12, 2024

A few days before last week’s election, Bernie Sanders issued a dire warning to voters: “If Donald Trump is elected, the struggle against climate change is over.”

He had that right.

Climate change fanaticism was effectively on the ballot last week. The green energy agenda was decisively defeated.

It turns out that the tens of millions of middle-class Americans who voted for Trump weren’t much interested in the temperature of the planet 50 years from now. They’re too busy trying to pay the bills.

That result shouldn’t be too surprising. Every poll in recent years has shown climate change ranks near the bottom of voter concerns. Jobs, inflation and illegal immigration register much higher on the scale of concerns.

But if you asked the elite of America in the top 1% of income, climate change is seen as an immediate and existential threat to the planet. Our poll at Unleash Prosperity earlier this year found that the cultural elites were so hyper-obsessed with climate issues, they were in favor of banning air conditioning, nonessential air travel and many modern home appliances to stop global warming. Our study showed that not many of the other 99% agree.

Wake up, Bernie and Al Gore.

Climate change has become the ultimate luxury good: the richer you are, the more you fret about it.

Among the elite, obsessing about climate change has become a favorite form of virtue signaling at the country club and in the faculty lounges. There is almost no cross the green elites — the people who donate six figures or more to groups like the Sierra Club — aren’t willing to make lower-income Americans bear to stop global warming.

Herein lies the political curse of the climate issue. A millionaire doesn’t care much if the price of gas rises by $1 a gallon or if they have to pay another $100 a month in utility bills. But the middle class hates paying more.

It wasn’t just economic concerns that turned voters against climate crusaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Workers weren’t too thrilled with the heavy fist of government commanding them to buy an electric vehicle — whether they wanted one or not.

It hasn’t helped the greens’ cause that the same progressives out to save the planet with grandiose transformations and global government seem to have no problem with the garbage polluting the streets of our major cities, or the graffiti or the feces and urine smell on the street corners of San Francisco and New York City. That’s real pollution. And it’s affecting us here and now.

The good news is, this year’s voter revolt against the radical green agenda isn’t a vote for dirtier air or water. The air we breathe and the water we drink is cleaner than ever — a point that Trump correctly made. We will continue to make progress against pollution.

But the nonsense of “net zero” use of fossil fuels is a bridge way too far. The destruction of jobs historically held by blue-collar union workers ripped right into the heart of the Democratic Party’s traditional voting base.

In their zeal to save the planet, Democrats forgot to visit the steel mills, construction sites and auto plants to ask those workers what they thought.

Well, now we know. Americans recognize their shrinking paychecks and the higher price of gas they pay at the pump is the real clear and present danger to their way of life. If Democrats don’t start to get that, they too will go to bed worrying about their jobs.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

It seems that as more and more time goes by, my appreciation for the ingeniousness of our Founding Fathers elevates.

I write this before knowing the outcome of the election. I sit behind a “veil of ignorance,” with no advance knowledge of who will win the popular vote and who will win in the Electoral College.

We have a growing movement to replace the Electoral College with a winner-take-all National Popular Vote. This is advocated by some influential voices on both sides of the political spectrum.

Updated: Tue Nov 05, 2024

It seems that as more and more time goes by, my appreciation for the ingeniousness of our Founding Fathers elevates.

I write this before knowing the outcome of the election. I sit behind a “veil of ignorance,” with no advance knowledge of who will win the popular vote and who will win in the Electoral College.

We have a growing movement to replace the Electoral College with a winner-take-all National Popular Vote. This is advocated by some influential voices on both sides of the political spectrum.

But there are so many reasons why the unique system of voting for president is so vitally important to our republic. And we are, thankfully, a republic — not a majority/mob-rule “democracy.”

So here’s a quick civics lesson on the wisdom of the Electoral College.

First and foremost: We are a confederacy of states. The power of the federal government is derived from the states and the people. Washington is not the center of the universe. Power is disbursed across the land in America. New York and Washington don’t rule over our country — even though they think they do.

The Electoral College assigns power to every state — and safeguards the primacy of the states. It is critical to our system of federalism. America is unique in the world in our system of checks and balances, decentralized government power, and protection of the rights of the minority.

Without the Electoral College, eight to 10 large states would determine the election. California has a larger population than nine small states combined. But California, for all its virtues, is far from representative of our diverse country.

Would any candidate care about voters in Nebraska or New Hampshire or Nevada or Maine or Alaska or Iowa given that California has more voters than all of them combined? They wouldn’t even bother to ever go to those states and would be instead chasing down every last vote to be had in Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bronx.

Second, the Electoral College dramatically curtails voter fraud. The incentive to engage in massive illegal voting schemes in major cities (red and blue) would be massive and impossible to police. The graveyards would be full of voters on Election Day. Under the current election rules, the payoff from stuffing the ballot boxes in deep-red and deep-blue areas is curtailed. But under a National Popular Vote, even a few hundred thousand illegal ballots in major cities would have the effect of entirely disenfranchising every voter in North and South Dakota.

Stolen elections could become the rule, not the exception.

Some complain that because we’ve had elections where the candidate who wins the popular vote doesn’t win the election, the system is antidemocratic. I would argue these occasional outcomes only make the Electoral College all the more indispensable in keeping our country intact.

The system isn’t perfect, and something needs to be done about the risks of “unfaithful electors” who could change the election outcome.

But just as in tennis, where the player who wins the most points doesn’t always win the match, the current voting rules help protect our democracy, not undermine it.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

You may have heard that last week 24 Nobel economists wrote that Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plan would be better for America than the Trump agenda. The joint letter was spearheaded by the hyperpolitical Joseph Stiglitz. Yes, the same Joe Stiglitz who infamously flew to Caracas to endorse Hugo Chavez’s economic policies in 2007.

The letter claims the Trump economic plan would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” They also warn of the risk of a worldwide recession if former President Donald Trump wins. All that was missing was the prediction of dead puppies.

If these apocalyptic claims sound vaguely familiar, you have a good memory. Turns out this is exactly what many in this gang of leftist economists warned of in 2016. Here are a few examples:

Updated: Tue Oct 29, 2024

You may have heard that last week 24 Nobel economists wrote that Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic plan would be better for America than the Trump agenda. The joint letter was spearheaded by the hyperpolitical Joseph Stiglitz. Yes, the same Joe Stiglitz who infamously flew to Caracas to endorse Hugo Chavez’s economic policies in 2007.

The letter claims the Trump economic plan would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.” They also warn of the risk of a worldwide recession if former President Donald Trump wins. All that was missing was the prediction of dead puppies.

If these apocalyptic claims sound vaguely familiar, you have a good memory. Turns out this is exactly what many in this gang of leftist economists warned of in 2016. Here are a few examples:

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman fumed in The New York Times the morning after the 2016 election: “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump (has won), and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? … We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

Larry Summers, former President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary and former President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council director, warned: “Under Trump, I would expect a protracted recession to begin within 18 months. The damage would be felt far beyond the United States.”

There were many more of these end-of-the-world prophecies laid out.

They were all spectacularly wrong. The economy boomed under Trump, as did the stock market.

Then in 2021 many on this same list of Nobel economists signed a similar open letter assuring us that President Joe Biden’s policies wouldn’t cause inflation. Oops. Ten months later the inflation rate surged to its highest level (9.1%) since the Carter administration.

I too have skepticism on some of Trump’s positions. I’m not a fan of high tariffs or special interest tax carveouts. But what is undeniable is that the 2016 economic agenda worked like a charm — as measured by the record-breaking $4,000 to $5,000 gain in real incomes for average families. Conversely, incomes are down in real terms under Biden-Harris. Oh, and someone tell these ivory-towered economists that inflation and income inequality went DOWN, not up, under Trump.

It’s virtually impossible for anyone to bat 1,000 in their predictions, but what is remarkable is that when it comes to Trump and Biden, they have managed to record a perfect record with their crystal balls.

They have been wrong every time.

Their disregard for common sense may be due to a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. As an example, they argue that Trump tariffs will cause inflation, then they worry that Trump tax cuts will cause inflation. Excuse me, professors, but tax cuts and tax increases can’t both cause inflation at the same time. And if supply-side tax cuts increase production and work, they lower prices — as happened under Reagan and Trump tax rate reductions.

As an economist who cares about our profession, I’d love for these Nobels to simply admit they have been wrong and steer clear of politics. They should acknowledge that the real world is very different from the diagrams they draw on the chalkboards — and then just shut up. Or, better yet, move to the workers’ paradise of Venezuela.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

In the one debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the vice president attacked Trump for having a racist record, citing his statements in response to the protests In Charlottesville back in 2017.

My intention here is not to defend Trump on some of the things he says about race — which can be interpreted by some as offensive.

I’m here to look at whether Trump or Harris-Biden have a better actual record — not better rhetoric — in advancing the economic opportunities and advancement of Blacks and other minorities.

Updated: Tue Oct 22, 2024

In the one debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the vice president attacked Trump for having a racist record, citing his statements in response to the protests In Charlottesville back in 2017.

My intention here is not to defend Trump on some of the things he says about race — which can be interpreted by some as offensive.

I’m here to look at whether Trump or Harris-Biden have a better actual record — not better rhetoric — in advancing the economic opportunities and advancement of Blacks and other minorities.

In my just-published book, “The Trump Economic Miracle,” coauthored with Arthur Laffer, we point out the many achievements in Trump’s first term, such as right-to-try legislation for chronically sick Americans who want to try new potentially lifesaving treatments, achieving energy independence, the economic boom, and advancing peace around the world.

But arguably his most impressive accomplishment was lifting the living standards of minority Americans.

Under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, minorities made almost no progress and in several ways fell behind. Under Trump the financial and economic improvement was remarkable. Blacks saw almost twice the gains under Trump, while Asians and Hispanics saw five times the income gains. Blacks and Hispanics saw a $5,000 average gain in income under Trump.

The main reason for the far superior increase in the standard of living for minorities is that cumulative inflation was so much lower under Trump (8%) than under Biden (20%). Minorities get crushed by higher gas, grocery and housing prices.

But Trump’s record with minorities on income was also superior to that of Obama on an annualized basis. Remember, Obama was president for eight years versus four years (so far) for Trump.

But there is more. Under Trump, Blacks and Hispanics saw record reductions in poverty.

Trump’s policies were also better for Blacks and Hispanics than under America’s first Black president — Obama.

The unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics also hit record lows under Trump — although the rate has fallen this year under Biden. Homeownership for Blacks and Hispanics also hit an all-time high under Trump, and the rate today still remains below the Trump high-water mark.

It turns out that Trump tax cuts, energy policies and deregulation initiatives benefit not just the rich but people of all incomes and all ethnicities. For example, the average family saw roughly $10,000 of savings from Trump deregulation but saw a more than $40,000 cost (on a lifetime basis) under Biden’s reregulation policies.

One last point that Trump should emphasize: The most important civil rights issue of our time to improve the lifetime economic opportunities for Black and Hispanic children — especially those in inner cities — is school choice so that parents can send their kids to better schools. Trump is strongly in favor of this. Biden and Harris are strongly opposed — mostly because they care about teacher unions over minority children.

So if racism is about holding back economic progress of minorities, then the media has the narrative all wrong. Polls are showing that Trump is picking up ground with Black and Hispanic voters. But some 80% of Blacks are still saying they will vote for Harris.

If they vote their wallets and who’s best for their children’s financial future, they still may change their minds.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Here is something no one in the media is reporting as Vice President Kamala Harris continues to duck and weave like Muhammad Ali in the ring to avoid any questions about her economic plan.

The American Business Defense Foundation reports that under the Harris tax plan, the number of Americans subject to the hated death tax would double or triple. This would happen because Harris has declared she will let the Trump tax cut expire next year if she becomes president.

Thanks to the Trump tax cut, the amount of an estate that is currently exempt from tax is roughly $13.6 million.

Updated: Tue Oct 15, 2024

Here is something no one in the media is reporting as Vice President Kamala Harris continues to duck and weave like Muhammad Ali in the ring to avoid any questions about her economic plan.

The American Business Defense Foundation reports that under the Harris tax plan, the number of Americans subject to the hated death tax would double or triple. This would happen because Harris has declared she will let the Trump tax cut expire next year if she becomes president.

Thanks to the Trump tax cut, the amount of an estate that is currently exempt from tax is roughly $13.6 million.

But according to the IRS: “Under the tax reform law, the increase is only temporary. Thus, in 2026, the exemption is due to revert to its pre-2018 level of $5 million, as adjusted for inflation.”

Kamala wants this to happen. She wants to soak the millionaires and billionaires. But under her plan, thousands more families will be clobbered by this tax when a parent dies. This brings new meaning to the idea of “the grim reaper.”

We aren’t talking about the very rich — people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who are already subject to the unfair death tax. (Though these super billionaires have built massive family foundation tax shelters to escape the tax.)

Now many farms, ranches and family-owned businesses will have to be sold after a funeral just to pay the taxes. These are mostly owners and operators of small businesses that have been built up over a lifetime to million-dollar-plus enterprises. The owners have already paid Uncle Sam millions of dollars of income, property, payroll, energy, business and other taxes and annual levies.

Now they will have to pay a 40% estate tax rate, plus another 5 to 15% depending on what state they die in. In other words, roughly half of a family inheritance must be forked over to the politicians. The IRS gets almost as much as the kids and grandkids. The agents should at least pay their respect at the funeral!

How is that fair?

But wait. It gets worse.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill to make the death tax even more onerous. Under her bill, the estate tax rate would rise to as high as 55% to 65%, and the exemption would lower to $3.5 million. This means that as much as two-thirds of an estate could be seized by the government. This isn’t taxation. It’s confiscation of family property. Is the IRS going to seize grandma’s jewelry or grandpa’s stable of horses and the mansion he built himself?

Will family businesses have to undergo the indignity of a fire sale to vulture companies just to pay the taxes owed?

Guess who supports the Warren tax scheme? Yes, Harris thinks this is a swell idea.

Incredibly, if the Warren tax came to pass, the United States — the land of the free — would have the highest estate tax in the world.

Higher than Russia. Higher than China. Higher than the socialist nations of Europe.

The real-world impact of death taxes this high is that older people will avoid the death tax by lavishly spending down the family estate so that there is no money left to tax. The incentive is to die broke. Family businesses won’t be able to pass from one generation to the next. This is how the death tax destroys jobs and investment.

By contrast, former President Donald Trump will make his death tax relief permanent. Family businesses and estates will remain vibrantly intact.

This is one of many vital tax issues voters should consider on Election Day.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Why is it that the politicians keep referring to America as a “democracy”? How many times have we heard that former President Donald Trump is “threat to democracy”?

Well, yes, we are a democracy. We vote in and out of office our politicians.

But more importantly, we are a republic. This is basic civics: Our forefathers set up myriad checks and balances to protect against majority rule and to safeguard the right of the minority. We have three branches of government. We have two houses of Congress. We have a presidential veto to repel bad laws. We have a Supreme Court to strike down laws that violate the right of our citizens.

Updated: Tue Oct 08, 2024

Why is it that the politicians keep referring to America as a “democracy”? How many times have we heard that former President Donald Trump is “threat to democracy”?

Well, yes, we are a democracy. We vote in and out of office our politicians.

But more importantly, we are a republic. This is basic civics: Our forefathers set up myriad checks and balances to protect against majority rule and to safeguard the right of the minority. We have three branches of government. We have two houses of Congress. We have a presidential veto to repel bad laws. We have a Supreme Court to strike down laws that violate the right of our citizens.

We have 50 states that make their own laws. These are all safeguards against tyranny.

In short, we don’t have mob or majority rule in America. Sorry, 51% can’t impose their ironfisted rule on the other 49% — thank God.

Now we have Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats in Congress promising to end the filibuster in the Senate if they take power. This would allow a Democratic (or Republican) majority to steamroll through legislation with just 51 votes, not 60. It’s mob rule that endangers the rights of the minority. It would also make it easier for Congress to pass laws. We should want to make it harder given how many bad and invasive laws we live under today.

For the record, Republicans have tried this gambit when they’ve had majorities in the Senate. I made a lot of enemies when I came out against the Republicans for attempting to take this nuclear option several years ago. Even for appointments to the Supreme Court, it should take 60 votes, not 51, given the enormous powers conferred to these robed judges.

One of the most brilliant defenses of the filibuster comes from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). He argued when Joe Biden was elected president that retaining the 60-vote rule in the Senate should be sacrosanct.

He noted that many Democrats “see the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold not as a prudent protection of minority rights, but as an anti-democratic obstacle to progress. … Former president Barack Obama — a prolific filibusterer himself during his Senate career — falsely derided the filibuster rule as a ‘Jim Crow relic.'”

But Lee warned: “The true purpose of nuking the filibuster, then, is not to ‘finally get things done’ or to ‘break through the gridlock’ or any other hackish trope parroted by the political press. Rather, it is to allow a Senate majority to pass partisan bills that aren’t politically compelling enough to attract bipartisan support.”

He warns Democrats that if they “nuke the filibuster,” they are being shortsighted. Republicans will use these same new rules to pass a “border wall,” education “reforms embracing school choice,” more gun rights, “laws to improve America’s election security and integrity” and so on.

I’d like to commend two Senate Democrats who put the republic above party. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona were the only two Senate Democrats who heroically saved the filibuster two years ago.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that both will be gone from the Senate next year.

The Dems may sweep in November, or it may tilt to a wave for Republicans winning the political troika: White House, Senate and House.

Who in the Senate will take a principled position as Sens. Lee, Manchin and Sinema have done to prevent mob rule in Washington?

The filibuster is not in the Constitution. But as far back as the first years of our nation, George Washington called the Senate the chamber of Congress that would “cool” legislation coming from the House of Representatives. The Senate is supposed to be the most deliberative body ever invented. That can be frustrating for those who want dramatic change.

But bad laws passed in the heat of the moment are much, much worse than no laws at all.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

At the time of this writing, the outcome of the presidential race is pretty close to being a coin flip. So what I write is not in any way influenced by who will win in November, since that is unknowable.

What is a virtual certainty is that on Nov. 6 roughly half the country will be full of joy, and the other half will be in a deep depression likely to last throughout the next four years.

Don’t be surprised if the anger and despair of the losing party spills over into prolonged violent protests — especially in the streets of the major cities. Politics in America is now — regrettably — a contact sport.

Updated: Tue Oct 01, 2024

At the time of this writing, the outcome of the presidential race is pretty close to being a coin flip. So what I write is not in any way influenced by who will win in November, since that is unknowable.

What is a virtual certainty is that on Nov. 6 roughly half the country will be full of joy, and the other half will be in a deep depression likely to last throughout the next four years.

Don’t be surprised if the anger and despair of the losing party spills over into prolonged violent protests — especially in the streets of the major cities. Politics in America is now — regrettably — a contact sport.

Whoever wins, America will be further ripped down its seams. Red- and blue-state America will even be more polarized. Don’t be surprised if half the country is near rebellion against the policies of either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Patronizing speeches by the victor about being president of “all the people” and promises to “unite” will only pour salt in the wounds of the losing side. The Left will detest the Trump agenda. The Right will fight against every element of the Harris agenda. It will feel like an occupation for the 49% on the losing side.

We need to accept the unhappy reality that we are today the Disunited States of America. The U.S. is ideologically, culturally, economically more polarized than perhaps any time since the Civil War. The conservative half of the country is on Venus and the liberal half is on mars. Yes, there is a moderate/middle section — but the tails have grown more populated and influential.

We see in polls that more and more Americans don’t even want to associate with those with different political views. We are also becoming more geographically segregated — not on the basis of race or ethnicity or income but on ideology. Red states are getting redder. Blue states are getting bluer. In recent years, an estimated two million Republicans have moved out of states like New York for states like Florida, Texas and the Carolinas.

Given these realities, is there a way for us to “all get along”?

Fortunately, yes. There is a logical way to keep America “united” as one nation and to avert chaos and mayhem. Fortunately, this solution is entirely consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For those who have forgotten, the 10th Amendment decrees that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to “the states and the people.”

We need a radical return to federalism. We need to devolve powers back to the states.

We as citizens of all states are, of course, united by a common national defense, the commerce clause, which made America the largest and most prosperous free-trade zone in world history, and most importantly our inalienable rights as citizens as set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A state, for example, does not have the right to pass laws that would violate a citizen’s right to free speech or peaceful assembly, or to discriminate against citizens on the basis of skin color or gender.

But given the schisms in society, most everything else is better decided at the state — not the federal — level. Issues related to transportation, taxation, education, environment, energy and business regulation belong to the states. Americans are then able to escape from policies they view as oppressive by moving to a state that conforms with their values and lifestyle decisions.

People in Mississippi or Utah have no problem with Californians charging a 13.3% income tax rate, enacting forced union policies, providing free health care to illegal immigrants, shutting down their power plants, abolishing gas stoves or plastic bags, or providing reparation payments to aggrieved groups.

New Yorkers shouldn’t mind if Texans impose no income tax, allow people to drive 75 miles an hour down the highways or regulate how cattle are bred.

What residents in red states like Montana and South Carolina object to is New Yorkers telling them how to live their lives.

We can under this framework have Harris policies prevail in blue states and Trump policies prevail in red states, and everyone goes away happy.

No harm, no foul.

Again, the federal government is still responsible for protecting the civil liberties and “inalienable rights” of ALL residents of the United States. There would be no bringing back Jim Crow laws.

Alas, this framework is exactly the opposite of what Democrats seek. If you examine the Biden and Harris agendas, the Dems are determined to FEDERALIZE nearly all policies, which forces all Americans in every state to live under the same sets of laws and policies. They want to nationalize union policies, environmental policies, energy policies, welfare policies, taxation and so on. They want to de facto toss out the ninth and 10th amendments altogether.

This inevitably leads to the tyranny of the majority, which now and after November will be a razor-thin majority dictating policies on all Americans. This tyranny will be even greater felt if either a victorious GOP or the Democrats overturn the filibuster rule of 60 votes to muscle sweeping legislation out of the Senate.

Amazing that some 250 years ago our Founding Fathers had exactly the right vision for keeping America united in 2024 and beyond.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

We all know that math scores have been scandalously trending downward for many years, but the folks in the government should at least be able to count.

We’re finding more and more evidence that the statistics the government is releasing to the public are increasingly suspect and unreliable. It seems like the errors are not random but perhaps manipulated for political advantage. Judge for yourself.

Let’s start with crime statistics. Former President Donald Trump said in the debate that crime is out of control, and Vice President Kamala Harris countered by citing government statistics from the FBI indicating that crime rates are falling.

Updated: Tue Sep 24, 2024

We all know that math scores have been scandalously trending downward for many years, but the folks in the government should at least be able to count.

We’re finding more and more evidence that the statistics the government is releasing to the public are increasingly suspect and unreliable. It seems like the errors are not random but perhaps manipulated for political advantage. Judge for yourself.

Let’s start with crime statistics. Former President Donald Trump said in the debate that crime is out of control, and Vice President Kamala Harris countered by citing government statistics from the FBI indicating that crime rates are falling.

But Jeffrey Anderson, former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, finds a surge in urban violent crime since 2019. He writes in the Wall Street Journal that “the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019.” The urban violent crime rate was up 40%, and urban property crime rate rose 26%.

How can the Left keep saying crime is down? A big reason is the FBI figures are only measuring “crimes reported to the police.” More than half of violent crimes are not reported, thanks to what Anderson calls a new era of “lax law enforcement policies” in urban areas. Police in big cities also have an incentive to undercount crimes to make their performance look better.

Next, we have jobs data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics admitted last month that it has overstated job growth by more than 800,000 positions. And in just the last year the government has also overstated job growth by almost 500,000 from the original monthly headline numbers. This is an overcount of over 1 million. In 10 of the last 13 months, the errors were in the direction of announcing too many jobs.

So President Joe Biden gets the gangbuster headlines, and the whoopsie daisy comes later when no one is paying attention.

Those aren’t just random errors. Was the Biden Labor Department finagling the data? Maybe.

Then there was the decennial Census Bureau population count. The numbers from the 2020 census were wildly wrong, as the bureau admits.

In an analysis issued in 2021 called the “Post-Enumeration Survey Estimation Report,” the Census Bureau reported which states recorded overcounts of their population, and which saw undercounts. Florida, Texas, Tennessee and other red states were undercounted by some 1.5 million residents. The overcounting was in mostly blue states like New York and Minnesota. Again, was this just an accident?

The miscount may have cost Republicans three electoral seats. This means the presidential election and control of the House of Representatives may be decided because of an error in counting heads.

These government agencies are supposed to be politically independent, and historically, they have been filled with professionals devoid of bias. But when we see the errors all bending the data in the direction of benefiting one party, one has to wonder if this is deliberate misrepresentation.

I hope I’m wrong and that these are innocent errors. But we live in an era where everything in Washington is hyper-politicized. Elections have become a blood sport. The saying is that “all is fair in love and war.” And now add politics to that.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, coauthored with Arthur Laffer, is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

The Wall Street Journal noted last week that American shareholders will lose tens of billions of dollars in investment income from their stock holdings in Silicon Valley companies like Google and Apple if several European Union sham lawsuits prevail.

These are generally suits alleging that America’s dominant tech companies are acting like monopolists. Or, to borrow a term, our tech companies are “price gouging.” Many of these companies are now above $2 trillion in their market cap. Every pension fund in America expands in size and benefits paid out to workers when these companies expand.

The EU’s courts outrageously ruled this week that Apple shareholders owe Europe 13.5 billion euros in back taxes because the company took advantage of Ireland’s low 12.5% tax rate. The EU “competition chief” declared that this sham court decision “is a big win for European citizens and tax justice.” No, it’s a big win for big government.

Updated: Tue Sep 17, 2024

The Wall Street Journal noted last week that American shareholders will lose tens of billions of dollars in investment income from their stock holdings in Silicon Valley companies like Google and Apple if several European Union sham lawsuits prevail.

These are generally suits alleging that America’s dominant tech companies are acting like monopolists. Or, to borrow a term, our tech companies are “price gouging.” Many of these companies are now above $2 trillion in their market cap. Every pension fund in America expands in size and benefits paid out to workers when these companies expand.

The EU’s courts outrageously ruled this week that Apple shareholders owe Europe 13.5 billion euros in back taxes because the company took advantage of Ireland’s low 12.5% tax rate. The EU “competition chief” declared that this sham court decision “is a big win for European citizens and tax justice.” No, it’s a big win for big government.

Meanwhile, Google shareholders are now forced to pay the EU $2.7 billion because its search engine has become dominant in the European market. The European search engines are so inferior that nobody wants to use them. So, sue American companies.

Let’s be clear here: The EU laggards are simply green with envy. The Eurozone has been crushed by American tech dominance. No company in socialist Europe has found a way to compete with American innovation at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and so on. Since they can’t compete, they invent sore-loser lawsuits.

That’s what the losers in sports from junior high school on always pout about: The other side didn’t play fair.

The bigger issue is why the Biden administration isn’t defending American companies from European extortion. These tech lawsuits are a tax on American knowhow and innovation.

Instead of defending American shareholders from the EU predators, the Biden regulators encourage and give legitimacy to the foreign courts.

How can the U.S. government complain against specious antitrust attacks (tech prices are falling dramatically) against Google and Apple when our own regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are bringing copycat lawsuits against our tech giants in U.S. courts? Lina Khan of the FTC has spent nearly four years peppering our tech industry leaders with nuisance lawsuits of her own.

The capricious fine against Google is a result of an American company shopping around the globe to find the lowest tax climate (Ireland) for doing business. This is illegal? Our corporate tax rate thanks to the Trump tax cut is now 21%, down from 35% under former President Barack Obama. But President Joe Biden and now presidential candidate Kamala Harris want to raise it back up to 28% or more. That only encourages more jobs and investment to move offshore. Did I mention that Ireland’s rate is just 12.5%?

Instead of lowering the rates here, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants to force Ireland and other low-tax countries to raise their rates to a global minimum tax of 15% or more. This sounds a lot like collusion and cartel policy. It’s like telling Kellogg’s they can’t charge less than $3 a box for Special K as a way to compete with Cocoa Crispies.

Similarly, the antitrust lawsuits from Europe and Washington aimed at American tech companies are spurious because nearly every price for tech services — from cellphones to drone deliveries to internet searches to fiber optic hookups — has been falling. How are consumers getting gouged if they keep paying less for new technologies?

There’s an old saying in sports: no harm, no foul.

I often don’t like the politics of Big Tech. But the end result of what Washington is doing to penalize American tech giants for building a better mousetrap is to move the high-tech hubs of the world — from Silicon Valley to Austin to Boston to Miami — to competitor nations. That’s a good way to lose jobs and put America last.

Stephen Moore is a cofounder of Unleash Prosperity. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, “The Trump Economic Miracle,” coauthored with Arthur Laffer, will be released later this month.

In 1982 the federal budget deficit rose above $100 billion for the first time (those were the good old days!), and then-President Ronald Reagan agreed to an infamous budget deal with then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Democrats would agree to $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. Reagan foolishly agreed to the deal. The taxes went up. The spending cuts never materialized.

Reagan used to fume for the rest of his presidency, “I’m still waiting for those $3 of spending cuts.”

Back then Democrats at least pretended they would cut spending. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis pledged in 1988 that he would “only raise taxes as a last resort.”

Updated: Tue Sep 10, 2024

In 1982 the federal budget deficit rose above $100 billion for the first time (those were the good old days!), and then-President Ronald Reagan agreed to an infamous budget deal with then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Democrats would agree to $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. Reagan foolishly agreed to the deal. The taxes went up. The spending cuts never materialized.

Reagan used to fume for the rest of his presidency, “I’m still waiting for those $3 of spending cuts.”

Back then Democrats at least pretended they would cut spending. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis pledged in 1988 that he would “only raise taxes as a last resort.”

My, how times have changed. Now we have red ink multiple times higher than back then, with the Biden-Kamala baseline forecast calling for $2 trillion in deficits from now until kingdom come. The Democrats are entirely untroubled by the forecast and act as though the federal credit card has no limit.

Well, if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election, we will put that risky proposition to the test.

Because in the wake of the largest amounts of red ink in American history, Harris has proposed zero reductions in federal spending. That’s right: not a single penny.

I’ve thoroughly searched through every Harris campaign document and declaration on the economy and the budget but haven’t discovered even one program, out of the thousands of line-item agencies in the budget, that she would shutter or terminate.

With Harris, it’s big government everlasting.

The plan is $4.6 trillion in new taxes, as reported by The New York Times, to go with zero spending cuts. That means the ratio of taxes to spending cuts is infinity to one.

Republicans are hardly blameless in the ocean of red ink. But at least former President Donald Trump has proposed a presidential commission to identify ways to cut hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, theft, duplication and inefficiency in federal programs. This commission, to be headed by Elon Musk, is a brilliant idea.

Democrats have greeted the idea with contempt. Their tolerance of government waste and fraud reminds me of the famous Jack Nicholson line in the movie “A Few Good Men”: “You don’t WANT to know the truth.” Democrats don’t want to expose the government corruption and inefficiency.

Harris’ only ideas for cutting the budget are gimmicks like Medicare price controls or revoking patents to lower costs. These are likely to hurt the economy more than help.

Now we are hearing from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street analysts that Harris will be better for reducing debt than Trump. They seem to agree that a $4.6 trillion tax increase on business and investors is just what the doctor ordered.

Have they told their clients that?

Give Harris credit. She isn’t disguising her master plan: the biggest tax and spend binge in American history. I just hope voters are paying attention.

Stephen Moore is a cofounder of Unleash Prosperity. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, “The Trump Economic Miracle,” coauthored with Arthur Laffer, will be released later this month.

Everyone these days — on both sides of the political spectrum — seems to want the feds to regulate internet access, prices and online content. They want the Federal Communications Commission to be the referee in terms of who gets connected to the internet and what can and can’t be said.

But three recent events highlight why this is a dangerous idea, and why an internet free of government regulation and policing is the best policy.

The first event was the recent 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that wisely struck down FCC’s illegal power grab to regulate internet access. The Biden-Harris administration has wanted to treat the internet as a regulated utility — a “common carrier” — despite falling costs and the fact that well over 90% of Americans already have access to high-speed internet. All of this WITHOUT any government interference, thank you. Private companies from Google to Apple to AT&T and Verizon have created near-universal access to gain more customers, and an Unleash Prosperity study has found that federal rules have actually impeded internet connections.

Updated: Tue Sep 03, 2024

Everyone these days — on both sides of the political spectrum — seems to want the feds to regulate internet access, prices and online content. They want the Federal Communications Commission to be the referee in terms of who gets connected to the internet and what can and can’t be said.

But three recent events highlight why this is a dangerous idea, and why an internet free of government regulation and policing is the best policy.

The first event was the recent 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that wisely struck down FCC’s illegal power grab to regulate internet access. The Biden-Harris administration has wanted to treat the internet as a regulated utility — a “common carrier” — despite falling costs and the fact that well over 90% of Americans already have access to high-speed internet. All of this WITHOUT any government interference, thank you. Private companies from Google to Apple to AT&T and Verizon have created near-universal access to gain more customers, and an Unleash Prosperity study has found that federal rules have actually impeded internet connections.

A study by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan has found that the cost of FCC regulations has actually disproportionately fallen on lower-income households.

The second event was the recent finding that the Biden-Harris “infrastructure bill,” which dedicated billions of dollars to increasing access to the internet under the guise of “net neutrality” has been an embarrassing bureaucratic flop. Despite some $42 billion authorized to expand high-speed connectivity to rural and inner-city areas, it turns out that three years later almost no households have been connected. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner of the FCC, found that the agency “has not connected even 1 person with those funds. In fact, it now says that no construction projects will even start until 2025 at earliest.”

So much for “high-speed” internet.

Finally, and most chilling of all, there was Meta/Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Aug. 26 letter, which admitted to the House Judiciary Committee that the Biden administration had pressured the company to “censor” COVID-19 content relating to health practices and vaccine safety during the pandemic.

In July 2021, President Joe Biden declared that social media platforms like Facebook “are killing people” for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on its platform. When the Zuckerberg letter was announced, the Biden administration failed to even apologize for its gross violation of the First Amendment and issued a mishmash explanation that they were trying to save lives.

One wonders what the reaction of “progressives” would have been if this blatant and dangerous government violation of freedom of speech and the right of a free press had been ordered by the Trump administration. The incident is especially chilling given that the real dispenser of misinformation about COVID-19 came from the government itself. It was Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that successfully advocated for lockdowns of the economy and shutdowns of schools, which killed far more Americans than were saved.

In a matter of weeks, these three incidents each provided important lessons on why the internet and access to digital services must remain regulation-free if we want America to continue to dominate the digital-age technology revolution.

Just over 20 years ago, only half of Americans had access to internet services. Now almost 19 out of 20 households have home access to the internet on their smartphones.

If we have government content police, we are likely to have politics interfering with Americans’ access to information. Is there misinformation spread over the internet? Of course, yes. But there is misinformation spread every day in The New York Times, on CNN and talk radio, and even by government agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the alternative to a free press is to rely on the government and politicians for the truth. And that would be a real “danger to democracy.”

Stephen Moore is a cofounder of Unleash Prosperity. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, “The Trump Economic Miracle,” coauthored with Arthur Laffer, will be released later this month.