Taxes
May 21, 2026 — John Hinderaker
When Scott and I began writing newspaper op-eds and magazine pieces circa 1990, one of the subjects we focused on was the Democrats’ persistent lying about taxes. One of our articles in National Review, which exposed lies that Democratic journalists told about former President George H.W. Bush’s taxes, generated a signed, hand-typed letter from Bush to us. Lies about taxes are particularly absurd, since the IRS publishes data every year
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April 25, 2026 — Scott Johnson
James Meigs is one of my favorite writers. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of MI’s City Journal. I met Mr. Meigs at a Manhattan Institute dinner in 2024. He is a learned and delightful gentleman. As the editor of Popular Mechanics in years gone by, he made the magazine a major voice on technological issues of the day. Most recently, he has
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April 15, 2026 — John Hinderaker
This pretty much says it all. The question, I suppose, is whether we have gotten to the point where the check cashers outnumber the check writers:
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April 15, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Today is April 15. You have probably filed your income tax return. It is unlikely you are wondering whether you paid your fair share. However, others are. That much I can tell you. The Wall Street Journal takes up the issue with a look at the most recent data in a timely editorial. Analyze this: Tax Day has arrived again, and our April 15 condolences to those who pay the
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April 13, 2026 — John Hinderaker
California Democrats are proposing to tax billionaires (only once!), but Minnesota may go them one better. Fifteen Democratic members of the Minnesota House have introduced legislation to establish a wealth tax. But the Minnesota version would be levied annually, not just once, and you don’t have to be a billionaire to pay it–the bill would tax all wealth in excess of $10 million, just one percent of a billion. The
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April 1, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Bernie Sanders thinks the time is ripe for the expropriation of the wealth of the wealthy from those who have earned it. Never mind — he will put it to use in the service of all things bright and beautiful. What could go wrong? Something tells me that Sanders’s argument hasn’t been put to the test of analytical rigor. In the second paragraph of his Guaridan column plugging this year’s
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March 27, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The interview clip with David Friedberg below has attracted more than 2,000,000 views on X. Friedberg is the CEO of Ohalo Genetics and another company or two as well as the co-host of the All-In podcast. I think it’s fair to say he is a smart guy. In the video he asserts that California is “functionally bankrupt.” His point relates at least indirectly to the so-called billionaire tax that is
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March 23, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Mostly drawing on the work of Pirate Wires, I have been following the left’s big plans to raise existing taxes and to create new taxes that heretofore have not existed. I sat down this morning intending to highlight another Pirate Wires column this morning — Mike Solana’s “Theory of Power,” on California’s threatening — one time only! — billionaire wealth tax. The subhead asserts: “[T]he purpose of the wealth tax
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March 22, 2026 — John Hinderaker
The sorting of America’s states into blue and red, with the one-way population transfers that have followed, is the biggest political and cultural story of this century. In the abstract, one might have expected that blue states would trend redder and red states would trend bluer, toward a purple consensus, based on regression to the mean if nothing else. But that isn’t happening. Instead, red states are generally getting redder,
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March 20, 2026 — John Hinderaker
The most important contemporary phenomenon for our politics and, perhaps, for the future of our country is the ongoing sorting of our citizens into red and blue states. The dynamic is pretty simple: people are leaving blue states for red states, with the single exception of those whose first priority is lavish welfare benefits, who therefore seek out blue states. This might seem like a terrible deal for the blue
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March 18, 2026 — John Hinderaker
New York Governor Kathy Hochul evidently has figured out that her state is in a world of hurt. All those people that New York chased away with absurdly high taxes? She wants them to return: Gov. Kathy Hochul is begging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the city to come back and continue padding the Empire State’s lavish public handouts. Hochul made the case against caving to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s demands
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March 17, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco wrote Exit the King. It stands out in Ionesco’s canon as a play whose plot is straightforward and focuses on depletion rather than accumulation. In that sense it resembles the proposed billionaire tax that threatens to make its way onto the California ballot this November. We have been following the proposed tax and its federal counterpart in several posts on Power Line (with more to
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March 13, 2026 — Bill Glahn
‘Cause I’m the taxman, Yeah, I’m the taxman, And you’re working for no one but me. From the New York Post, Extreme Mamdani estate tax proposal goes right after New York’s middle class families. The New York mayor submitted a dozen or so proposals to the state legislature in Albany to raise more tax revenue. I’m guessing he needs the money to pay for his free bus service. The headline
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March 6, 2026 — Scott Johnson
We have been following the progress of the proposed tax on the wealth of billionaires that theatens to make its way onto the ballot in Callifornia this November. It represents a bald form of “the danger of democratic theft” that John and I discussed in our 2005 essay on the income tax: Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority
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March 5, 2026 — Scott Johnson
In 2005 Karl Zinsmeister was editor of the American Enterprise — the monthly publication of the American Enterprise Institute — when he invited John and me to write a historical essay on income taxes that would be included in an issue devoted to George W. Bush’s promotion of an “ownership society.” Remember? I don’t either. The issue was published in March 2005 with the cover flagging the theme: From Alms
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March 3, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Through the work of Pirate Wires we have drawn attention to the progress of the possible billionaire tax that threatens to make its way on to the ballot in California. It is responsible for the escape of some megasuccessful citizens from the state. In following the progress of the ballot initiative, my thought has been that what happens in Californian doesn’t stay in California. Riley Nork writes in this morning’s
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February 24, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Reading the February 26 issue of The Spectator World, I find Lionel Shriver’s column on California’s looming billionaire tax. I have taken up both Ms. Shriver and the billionaire tax on Power Line in recent days. We don’t want to miss this. Online, the Spectator has headlined her column “No one is safe from a wealth tax.” (In the magazine it’s headlined “The creeping tentacles of a wealth tax.”) Here
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