Independent Institute's Contributions

Dec 11 – Following the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush, politicians in Washington, D.C., returned to Capitol Hill to engage in what has become a different kind of ceremonial performance, one that’s become something of...

By Independent Institute – Some states have consistently performed poorly, such as Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey. They have experienced ongoing structural deficits, a growing reliance on debt to fund spending, underfunded pensions and other...

By Independent Institute – The people who run Facebook have some very strange ideas about the speech rights of the company’s customers, which they’ve encoded into computer algorithms that act to censor voices to which...

By Independent Institute – By and large, Americans support spending more money on public education and schools. That general rule of thumb comes, however, with a caveat. Americans expect that when they give public schools...

By Independent Institute – A recent story in the New York Times discussed the increasing willingness of political candidates in the United States to run as socialists. Times reporter Farah Stockman wrote that the Democratic...

By Independent Institute – California governor Jerry Brown wants to impose the state’s first-ever tax on drinking water, tacked onto monthly bills, and accompanied by “fees” on fertilizer and dairy farmers. For embattled...

By Independent Institute – President Trump released his first budget proposal yesterday. At first glance, it looks pretty ugly where the concept of fiscal responsibility is concerned. The following chart shows the amount of the US...

By Independent Institute – For most Americans outside of the nonessential civilian federal government workforce, it will be difficult to tell the difference between a shut down federal government and a fully working federal government, which will make 2018’s episode...

By Independent Institute – In Puerto Rico, electrical power is solely provided to some 1.5 million households and businesses by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which is a monopoly owned by the territory’s government. That matters because...

By Independent Institute – What is your local government’s debt burden? Or in other words, how much of your local government’s annual revenue would be fully consumed by its liabilities? That’s a question that J.P. Morgan took...

By Independent Institute – The tax reform proposal offered last week by President Trump and Republicans in Congress would be an improvement over the current system, but more so for corporate income taxes than...

By Independent Institute – In a little-known 2006 World Bank report Where Is the Wealth of Nations? a team of economists provides a snapshot of wealth in 120 countries, and they find that governance is key.

By Independent Institute – The government in question is that of Venezuela, which is nearing default as it is running out of resources to pay back the money it owes to its Russian creditors according to the terms it accepted when it...

By Independent Institute – Humans are three-dimensional animals. They require physical space to live, work, and play. Over thousands of years, humans built physical communities of different shapes, sizes, and compositions to accommodate...

By Independent Institute – While it won’t be news to MyGovCost readers, President Trump did indeed tie together aid to fund the recovery to large-scale damage caused in Texas and Louisiana by Hurricane Harvey with an increase...

By Independent Institute – In 1990, Gilbert Hyatt was awarded the patent for the first single-chip microprocessor. The computer industry welcomed this invention, earning Hyatt a lot of money. He soon moved to Nevada, which has no state income tax.

By Independent Institute – In what is almost an annual tradition now, the US Congress will soon come up on the deadline where it must either approve a new increase in the statutory debt ceiling, the total amount of public debt outstanding that...

By Independent Institute – “Free” college and loan forgiveness are increasingly popular ideas. According to a recent AOL News poll, for example, 49 percent of respondents believe every state should offer free four-year public college...

By Independent Institute – These days it seems college is about everything but higher learning. Undergraduates enrolled in a Global Politics of Human Rights course at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, for example, were allowed...

By Independent Institute – The Congressional Budget Office has scored President Trump’s first budget proposal. In the report, the CBO finds significant reductions in the US government’s annual budget deficits compared to their baseline...