Anthony Galli

Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

The flattest of flat taxes explored.

I believe in low taxes, but too often any suggestion on how we could tax more effectively is met with the talking point, "Taxation is theft." Well, this is my response.

A low, simple, progressive income tax for greater growth, fairness, and freedom.

The most important political question you can ask yourself is... how much should government spending be as a percentage of GDP?

Charter schools are given more flexible means to achieve more objective results. They're popular with the Right, but yet why are they so uncommon and therefore how can we increase them?

Corporations are a product of the state. It makes sense to tax them.

Howdy partner! If this town ain't big enough for the both of us then just move along to the next one.

This video is not FDA Approved. Viewer beware.

Mr. President, the British are coming.

We can never get money out of politics, but this doesn’t mean we can’t reduce DC’s corruption and incompetence. The primary way to do this is via reducing DC’s power and complexity, but a secondary method is to impose term limits. Read full at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

The establishment: if you care about the national debt then you’re probably to blame for it so be quiet (gaslighting) and yet you shouldn’t really care about it because it’s an “investment.” In this video, I explain the forces that have caused our national debt to be so high.

The Fed targets 2% price inflation. Why? Is there a better target? Let's explore. You can read my essays at https://www.anthonygalli.com/.

This is a rebuttal to Kyle Kulinski's recent video: "Supreme Court Legitimacy Goes Up In Smoke"

Debunking Jimmy Dore's video: "State With The Lowest Homeless Rate Will Shock You" In the video he argues in favor of Finland and Mississippi's approach toward homelessness as well as offers up his own grand plan. Let's explore his well-intentioned thoughts to see the error of his ways. Link to his vid: https://youtu.be/F1M60MRTyzA

Over the last century, single-parent households have increased dramatically. The United States is #1 in the world. Children who grow up in single-parent households are much more likely to become depressed, Sue's recital, poor, obese, ignorant, violent, and Democrat. If you're a Democratic politician you may therefore want more single-parents(just as you may want more illegal immigrants and public school students), but if you actually care about children then your primary question should be,"How can we increase two-parent households again?" Fundamentally, the answer is to reduce the nanny state because Uncle Sam isn't a good substitute for a father. The best way to do this is to get the government out of marriage again. For most of Western history, marriage was a private contract between two families. None of our founding fathers had a marriage license. Marriage licenses only became popular during the late 19th century because states wanted to"exert more control over who was allowed to marry. “Since government has been involved in marriage, they have done what they always do - taxed it, regulated it, and now redefined it. It is hard to argue that government's involvement in marriage has made it better, a fact also not surprising to those who believe government does little right.” Over 40% of marriages end in divorce. As a divorce lawyer said,"Marriage is like a lottery. You're probably not going to win,"which explains why fewer people are buying marriage licenses. If any other product had this high of a failure rate it would've been recalled by now. It's hard to build a loving long-lasting relationship when Uncle Sam generally puts a gun to the husband's head whereupon request he'll pull the trigger, therefore, giving the wife half + more. Is it any wonder why the media mocks the subservient "do fus dad" while glorifying the independent "bad boy"? As a matter of principle, men should seek to put themselves in a fair position because it's how we create a fair society. Marriage should be structured like the old days where both parties would sign a private contract, which they could formulate with the help of their church, community, counsel, and/or an open-source website. I believe such a website would pop up in our Digital Age where it'd list contracts and their respective number of downloads, ratings, and divorce rates. I believe the contracts that would rise to the top would include but are not limited to: awill, next-of-kinfor hospital visits, marriage education... Read FULL essay at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

A bipartisan group of Senators have reached a framework agreement on guns. The framework proposes to: Every Republican who supports this framework should be primaried. It’s a disaster for five main reasons: How are we going to pay for it? Crickets. If these proposals are such a priority to these Senators then surely they can find areas in our $6 trillion dollar budget to cut to pay for it. Why is this a federal responsibility? States already fund “mental health,” “school safety,” and “red flag laws” so if they want to increase funding then that’s their prerogative. Our federal government is incompetent at its current responsibilities so it doesn’t need to take on more. Next, any increase in safety should be commensurate to an equal or greater increase in liberty. Where are the measures that would strengthen the 2nd Amendment such as by abolishing gun taxes? And if you’re going to use an 18 year old’s juvenile record against them then where is the law that would expunge it when they’re 21 years old? And then what percentage of the money that goes to "mental health" and "school safety" is effectively going to Democrats who advocate for gender theory and gun control? According to FEC data, 90% of mental health professionals are Democrats and the U.S. already spends more than virtually any country on Earth in education so why not take some of the money that goes to “administrators” and put it toward security, or just build a human wall of administrators in front of every school to at least make them useful. Read FULL article at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

According to one study, America is ranked64th in mass shoutings, but even if we were toadjust the variablesto count America as 1st the chance of dying in a mass shooting in any given year is extremely rare — 0.0000003%. The media uses mass shoutings as more of a jumping-off point to condemn gun violence in general, which America is arguably1stamong the developed world where you have about a 0.00006% chance of being murdered via a firearm orroughly 20,000 people per year, but what matters more than the method of murder is murder itself. So if weeffectivelybanned all guns would murder decrease? The key word iseffectivelybecause that’s a big “if” given that it’d be unconstitutional so we’d have to amend the constitution or at least appoint justices who would reinterpret the constitution as nothing more than the will of the living. Once that’s done the government could do a mandatory buyback program to whittle down our 400 million guns, but many Americans would refuse to surrender theirs so the government would have toforcibly confiscate somewhile harshly penalizing anyone caught with one later. In the UK, illegal possession is a minimum sentence of 5 years up to a maximum of 14 years. In addition, the only way to effectively ban all guns would be to crack down on the southern border, which is a wall too far for many of my friends on the Left. But putting reality aside, if the U.S. dideffectivelyban all guns would murder decrease? Some studiessay yes and some say no. It’s hard to imagine gangs, rapists, and thieves wouldn’t just turn to other means to achieve their nefarious ends like idk get elected to office. In fact, it seems like it’d be easier for criminals to impose their will, especially in lightly populated areas, which means however much money we’d have to spend on gun confiscation we’d have to spend 1000X more on law enforcement overall. If you thought Prohibition and the War on Drugs was ineffective then prepare to lock and load for the War on Guns. But perhaps we could make it work if we just cram everyone into highly secured facilities with cameras on every street corner, but then this would just make us easy targets for the greatest killer of them all: government. North Korea officially has zero mass shoutings, but we all know they’re effectively #1. The 2nd Amendment is about self-defense against individuals, organizations,andgovernments. The 2nd Amendment is ultimately what protects our 1st Amendment. Anyone who brings up hunting in relation to the 2nd Amendment knows less than the deer I shot and anyone who thinks well-armed Americans couldn’t defeat our federal government would shoo away a bear because they had mistook it for a deer. After our federal government spent an enormous amount of blood and treasure it still lost to poor people in North Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan so just imagine how much harder it’d be for our federal government to defy the very people it derives its power from. And as I point out to my UK friends, if there is any country for which the benefit of the right to bear arms outweighs the cost it is the United States because through our freedom we’ve pressured the world to be freer whereas if we were to fall into despotism we’d pull the whole world down with us. With that said, Democrats ostensibly don’t want to ban all guns,although I wonder if that’s true since they love to cite Canada, Europe, and Australia who had used similar rhetoric to disarm their populations,but they just want to ban “assault rifles,” high capacity magazines, and give the FBI more resources to do background checks on all firearm buyers. (gun control debate both sides) “Assault rifles” are automatic rifles, which are already banned, but the media has broadened its definition for political purposes, and when you couple this ban with banning high-capacity magazines it’d greatly reduce our ability to defend ourselves against governments and gangs. (gun control debate both sides) Federal background checks also undercut the 2nd Amendment by giving the final say-so to the very people it’s intended to say no. In the end, the share of prisoners who obtained guns through aretail store was 2% and from a gun show 0.8%so all the energy the Left expends on this issue at the opportunity cost of other issues ultimately wouldn’t even make a dent in gun violence, which makes me wonder is it because they don’t know better or is because they simply don’t care? So does this mean we should abolish all gun control? Should a toddler be able to crawl into a gun shop and demand the big shiny one? The way I see it: the ballot is the bullet and the bullet is the ballot. Force is force. And so both should be treated with similar reverence and used with similar restraint. Read FULL at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

Should Republicans and Democrats compromise by raising taxes and cutting spending to reduce thedeficit? I used to be more sympathetic to this question. But now my answer is a firm: No. For one, it’s difficult to calculate the actual spending-cut-to-tax-hike ratio. In 2011, Obama said he was offering 3-to-1 spending cuts, but the media said it was 2-to-1, some experts believed it was 1-to-1, and the GOP argued it was 1-to-4. It’s hard to reach a compromise when both sides believe they’re getting the short end of the stick. But for the sake of argument, let’s say Republicans were convinced we’d get 5-to-1 then should we compromise? Still no. There’s the electoral factor. Both Eisenhower and H.W. Bush had extremely high approval ratings, but then they raised taxes in exchange for even larger spending cuts, which, therefore, in part caused their party to lose the next election to JFK and Clinton who then cut taxes anyway. George H.W. Bush regretted breaking his pledge because had he just put the Democrats’ proposed tax increase to the people as Newt Gingrich had suggested then he probably would’ve won reelection. But I’m not one to advocate for public policies based on what’s politically expedient so let’s consider the third reason why Republicans should say no to an overall tax increase: economic growth. If you increase taxes you’re going to reduce economic growth from what it could’ve otherwise been because you’re likely taking productive capital out of the economy. The government turning around and spending it back into the economy, even if it's on unproductive ventures, at least in the short-term mitigates the growth reduction, but to tax and not spend eliminates the mitigation. The fourth reason to make people read your lips is that it’s much easier to increase spending than cut taxes. How much has federal spending increased from 1960–2019: 51% in real terms and 4% relative to GDP. There’s a clear upward trajectory in both respects: How much have taxes gone down? 0%. In fact, they’ve gone up by about the same percentage with the gap being made up via borrowing. This means with a spending-cut-to-tax-hike compromise we’ll likely see the spending cuts reversed, and perhaps more quickly, now that politicians could point to a budgetary surplus as an excuse to splurge a little. The fifth reason Republicans should say no to a tax increase is that they’ll lose their tax virginity. Once a politician loses their tax virginity it’s much harder for them to resist again in the future. They can try to justify it, but by compromising on what’s most Republicans' #1 priority   — tax cuts  —  it means they’re more likely to compromise again as well as on other matters large and small. If we had legislative term limits or if it was easier to throw out politicians then this might be less of a concern, but the reality is that legislators have around a 90% reelection rate so it’s particularly important that we make Republicans sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge before we elect them into an effectively lifelong position. But perhaps the most important reason why Republicans shouldn’t even support a 5-to-1 compromise is the existence of the Fed. During the 2008 financial crisis, the unelected Fed spent more money than our elected Congress. The federal government spent $431 billion via TARP and $357 billion via ARRA whereas the Fed spent an estimated $7.7 trillion. The only real check on the Fed’s spending is inflation where if it rises above 2% then they may try to reduce their spending if they feel it won’t do too much damage to the economy. They’re American shamans, but without the traditional pizazz. Inflation can be reduced via raising rates or raising taxes. Joe Biden’s account tweeted: “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.” Some conservatives pushed back on this because it would hurt the economy, but theoretically, his staff correct to draw a connection because what makes money valuable is the labor it represents, therefore, if the Fed wants to print more without the dollar losing too much value then the government must inject it with more blood, sweat, and tears. So with the existence of the Fed, what might’ve been a 5-to-1 compromise among our elected officials could instigate a downturn that causes our unelected officials to spend so much that government spending effectively turns into 0-to-1 or even -5-to-1. Read FULL at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

The US has a mostly socialist healthcare system. Our government accounts for over 65% of U.S. healthcare spending and the 35% that is private is highly distorted by regulations. Here are some of those regulations… Employer-based health insurance mandate for companies with over 50 full-time employees and tax penalties for individuals who try to self-insure. But our healthcare shouldn’t be dependent upon and decided by our employer. Medical licenses. I’m a strong supporter of credentialing, but they shouldn’t be required by law to practice medicine. There’s always a chance one gets an incompetent doctor, but consumer empowerment via reviews, reports, ratings, and when appropriate lawsuits is better at mitigating risk than limiting the number of people who can enter the field, ostensibly to protect the consumer, but in reality to protect the seller. America has the highest-paid doctors in the world because the American Medical Association has successfully mandated a doctor shortage. So much for the Hippocratic oath, huh? The average cost of a medical malpractice claim has increased by more than 50% since 2009, but the true cost isn’t so much in the claims themselves, but in what’s called “defensive medicine” whereby doctors will over-test-and-over-treat to avoid any potential lawsuit. We need to reduce malpractice claims, which can be done via tort reform and patients’ compensation. Certificate-of-Need: New hospitals are prohibited from opening without the approval of existing hospitals. This has made the hospital industry into a cartel with hospital spending now over a third of overall healthcare spending. Customers are prohibited from buying health insurance across state lines. Customers are prohibited from buying prescription drugs from overseas. The FDA doesn’t trust individuals to do their own cost-benefit analysis so they prohibit medical products from entering the market until they give their approval. Big Pharma has successfully lobbied to increase the average cost of drug approval to $3 billion and to a 10-year wait time. The FDA may sound good in theory, but its politicization of medicine has led to more corruption and its general risk-aversion has cost untold lives while at the same time the FDA gives people a false sense of confidence when its track record hasn’t been great. With 20-year patents, drug companies are incentivized to spend a lot of money filing and enforcing them. Patents should be abolished or at least cut down to 4 years because ultimately what drives innovation isn’t temporary monopoly control over a product, but by innovating so fast that the competition can’t keep up because they haven’t mastered the fundamentals. In other words, the most successful drug companies shouldn’t be the ones that own the rights to the best drugs, but that constantly innovate better ones. For example, Elon Musk has gone so far as to open-source Tesla despite their enormous research costs because he knows copycats make for weak tigers. NIH grants saddle medical researchers in bureaucratic paperwork and pulls their focus away from researching treatments that the market actually wants to fund. We should abolish the NIH, or at least reform federal funding where it would only be provided after-the-fact for achieving clearly defined national goals in high need areas like cancer, heart disease, and longevity. It shouldn’t be spent on studying coca*ne's effect on the s*xual habits of Quail. States’ are forced to comply with federal micromanagement of Medicaid in order to receive matching federal funds. These top-down requirements diminish states’ rights and force the poor into an inadequate, insolvent system. Therefore is the solution to our broken healthcare system to give even more control over our bodies to a corrupt incompetent federal body? Authoritarians think the answer is yes because “healthcare is a human right!” They only differ on whether they want a government option or a government monopoly in health insurance and/or treatment. They believe our federal government will be able to increase access, affordability, and quality. They point to international metrics such as infant mortality, which countries calculate differently, lifespans, which Americans choose to drive, eat, drink, and kill more often, and healthcare costs, which can only be so high due to its socialist aspects and where if we compare the true cost of government health insurance to private health insurance by factoring in the cost of tax collection, which deceitful studies tend to leave out, then they’re actually about the same, but nonetheless pointing to government-created problems to justify greater government control has always worked on the government “educated.” Read FULL essay at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote, "Under the gold standard, America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933. Oh, wait….returning to the gold standard is an almost comically (and cosmically) bad idea." Now first off, there were different stages of the gold standard, but economists consider the classical gold standard era from 1880 — 1914 to be its purest form because it wasn’t diluted like it was during the Civil War or later with the creation of the Fed. For example, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke blamed the Fed for the Great Depression. So let’s focus on the “financial panics” where everyone agrees the US was still on a true gold standard. But before you panic, let’s define a panic… A financial panic is a sudden, drastic, widespread economic collapse. So during those years there were indeed bank runs, which independent of the gold standard could’ve been mitigated via higher reserve requirements and/or deposit insurance, but was there “widespread economic collapse”? From 1884 to 1886 yearly growth was -1.6%, .3%, and 8.1%, which averages out to 2.3%. So this wasn’t a panic if you consider that it’s higher than the U.S. average from 1870 — 2018 of 1.67%. From 1890 to 1892 yearly growth was 9%, 1%, and 11%, which averages out to 7%. If this constitutes a panic then I’ll take one now please! From 1893 to 1895 yearly growth was -5.8%, -4.7%, and 11.4%, which averages out to .3%. This was a panic, but just as it’d be unfair to give monetary policy credit for everything good it’d be unfair to blame it for everything bad. When we actually dive into the details of this panic there are numerous factors that I’m sure even Krugman would acknowledge contributed to this recession, such as the massive railroad bubble popping, which was created by the US government’s easy lending policy, or the massive silver bubble popping, which was created by the US government’s easy buying policy, or the wheat bubble popping, which I’m not sure how much the gov. gets the blame here, but for the sake of continuity let’s just say it does! And then there was the passage of a 50% tax increase in the principal form of federal taxation at the time — the tariff. From 1907 to 1909 yearly growth was 2.6%, -10.8%, and 7.2%, which averages out to -.3%. This was also a panic where the US experienced the 9th largest decline in the stock market, but the financial sector used to make up a much smaller percentage of the economy and of the top 20 drops, 19 of them have occurred after the Fed’s creation. This panic was quickly stomped out by J.P. Morgan who had convinced New York bankers to inject large sums of their own money into the banking system to shore it up. It was this panic that led bank financiers to lobby for the Fed’s creation so that in future “panics” they wouldn’t have to risk their own money to save their own behinds. As a comparison, from 2007 to 2009 yearly growth was 1.9%, -.1%, and -2.5%, which averages to -.7%. And unlike the 1907 panic, this one massively increased our national debt and consolidated wealth into bigger-than-ever institutions and bubbles. Now, let’s look at the big macroeconomic picture… From 1870 to 1914, US GDP growth totaled 393% whereas from 1970 — 2014 it totaled 242%. From this lens, the gold standard doesn’t sound like such a “comically (and cosmically) bad idea” after all, especially when you consider that a 1% difference is equal to $210 billion or roughly one Elon Musk. Paul Krugman then argues in Golden Instability, "Anyone who believes that the gold standard era was marked by price stability, or for that matter any kind of stability, just hasn’t looked at the evidence." I’ve looked at the evidence so Mr. Krugman’s claim is already incorrect, but quibbling aside, let’s look at the two charts he cited to support his claim… Besides the fact that America wasn’t under the classical gold standard anymore from 1919 to 1932, let’s look at the bigger picture here to get a more accurate understanding of price stability… So why did America’s arguably most followed “top economist” not cite the full picture? Clearly, prices were much more stable pre-1914, pre-1933, and pre-1971. The final argument Krugman makes in his essay is that… "There is a remarkably widespread view that at least gold has had stable purchasing power. But nothing could be further from the truth." Read FULL at https://www.anthonygalli.com/

We need to end the Fed. The Federal Reserve makes interest rates artificially low to encourage lending. This is popular in the short term because people can buy more stuff, but it inevitably leads to massive bubbles. The Fed has a 2% inflation target, but since it completely abandoned the gold standard in 1971 inflation has averaged around 3.9% per year, which may not sound like much, but it’s a cumulative price increase of 600%. And the only reason it isn’t higher, despite a massive increase in the money supply, is because velocity has been decreasing. Velocity is the “rate at which money is exchanged in an economy.” A low velocity indicates “a general reluctance to spend money.” Once countries who use the dollar as their reserve currency start to lose faith in the dollar’s ability to retain its value then they’ll spend them on other currencies and commodities. Velocity and inflation will then pick up. Inflation acts as a hidden tax on workers and savers so looking ahead you can expect to see your wages and savings depreciate as inflation starts to converge with the money supply again. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” — Milton Friedman The Fed is cronyist. It’s a private institution with public power. The big banks sit on its board (revolving door), receive salaries, divide the Fed’s profit among themselves, accumulate interest on government bonds, sell crappy assets to the Fed (quantitative easing), are protected from risk with the Fed acting as a Lender of Last Resort (bailouts), and those who benefit the most from an inflationary currency are those who get to touch the newly printed dollars first because they get to buy things in the economy at a discount before prices have a chance to readjust to the new money supply. The Fed is opaque. As Ron Paul said, “Freedom and central banking are incompatible.” The Fed has never been fully audited so we don’t know exactly how much money they owe and to who. How can any voter confidently consider themselves politically informed when we are kept in the dark over trillions of dollars? The Fed is not only unelected, but it’s unaccountable. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that the Fed was responsible for the Great Depression. The Great Recession was also largely due to the Fed. Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco, said in 2005, “If the bubble was to collapse on its own, would the effect on the economy be exceedingly large? No.” And then in 2007, “I think the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse — one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy — have been largely allayed.” She was then fired. Just kidding, she was promoted to the two most powerful monetary positions in America — Fed chair and now Secretary of Treasury. In government, it apparently pays to be wrong because had she been one of the few who had sounded the alarm then she would’ve been perceived as a poor team player. The Fed then spends billions of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate the public on how great the Fed is while corrupting academia to the point where many PhD economists are Fed apologists because their profession’s top two employers are academia and government. As Milton Friedman said, “The Fed’s relatively enhanced standing among the public has been aided by the fact the Fed has always paid a great deal of attention to soothing the people in the media and buying up most of its likely critics.” This opaque cronyism lies at the heart of our financial system where literally 50% of every transaction is money and so this unethical way in which its managed has undeniably infected the rest of our culture. The Fed is unconstitutional. Our government is a government of enumerated powers. Among the powers given to Congress is to “coin money and regulate the value thereof,” but there was no such statement saying Congress could issue paper money or create a central bank. The federal government only started issuing paper money in 1861 to fund the Civil War. In 1791, the First Bank of the United States was chartered, but it didn’t set monetary policy, regulate private banks, hold their excess reserves, or act as a lender of last resort. And yet even with these constraints, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison still believed it was unconstitutional and tyrannical so they discontinued it in 1811... READ FULL ESSAY AT WWW.ANTHONYGALLI.COM

The last Republican president to not add to the national debt was Calvin Coolidge. The last Republican president to balance the federal budget was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960. And the last Republican Congress to balance it was in 2001. Over the last 50 years, the Republican Party has largely failed at fis-cul responsibility. With that said, it’s important we understand how to balance the budget so we don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the way to do it is via tax hikes. Priority #1 Republicans first budgetary priority should be to cut taxes in order to reduce federal revenue as a percentage of GDP. If after a tax cut, federal revenue is still above 10% then that means it wasn’t cut enough. If we cut taxes a little then thatcould actually increase federal revenue, but as conservatives we shouldn’t want to see“tax cuts pay for themselves.” If federal revenue falls below 10% then we can start to consider its ideal level(3% is the historical average), but since that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon due to the rising cost of entitlements and the Left’s incessant desire for more spending then this potential point of departure among the Right will unfortunately likely remain theoretical in our lifetime. As long as federal revenue is above 10%, Republicans should vote nay to its increase even if Democrats offer 3-to-1 spending cuts as a compromise because spending cuts are easier to reverse. “A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget.” — John F. Kennedy The modern Democratic Party supports increasing federal revenue because on the surface 16.3% (2019) of the largest GDP in the world may not sound like much, but when you add it on top of state and local taxes, government tax revenue is roughly 40% of GDP or $25K per person, which is more than what virtually every government on Earth taxes per person. As a federalist, I believe local and state governments should have a larger share of the tax revenue so that if you wanted to keep tax revenue at 30% GDP then one way to think about it is your city government would get 10%, state government 10%, and the federal government 10%(historically federal spending was 1/3). Power to the states! This was the intent of our constitution in part because it’s fundamentally more democratic so if, for example, Texans want less government (8%) and New Yorkers want more (14%) they can have that choice! The more decentralized power is then the more your voice matters! Overall, for those of you who are skeptical of low taxes let me just make several quick points. Taxes reduce economic growth, which as the 90′s proved economic growth is the primary way to reduce deficits. Taking people’s money by force (government) is inherently less effective at creating positive outcomes than earning people’s money (free market) by providing so much value they voluntarily trade it to you. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single thing that the government does that the private sector can’t do 10X better. High taxes lead to less innovation. How many bureaucrats does it take to make a lightbulb? There’s probably a subcommittee investigating that question for three decades andWe the Peopleare too ignorant and busy to care. High taxes also lead to more corruption. There’s no campaign finance law that has ever or will ever“get money out of politics”and anyone who suggests such is selling you a fairytale. And then finally just as I’m a federalist, I’m a nationalist. I believe in financial diversification. Europe, you do you! There are tradeoffs between an equality-centric economy and a growth-centric economy, but I believe for the sake of global freedom America must be growth-centric if we’re going to have any chance at staying more powerful than authoritarian China. Priority #2 Ideally, tax cuts should be offset by spending cuts. My biggest gripe with Trump is that he increased federal spending in real terms during a time of peace and growth with a Republican House and Senate. I get not wanting to touch the third rail of American politics (entitlements), but this would’ve been a good time to at least slash the federal bureaucracy by 10%. Presidents want to make the popular Keynesian move of cutting taxes and increasing spending (win-win), but Republicans should know that there’s no free lunch except in a mousetrap. The federal budget may not be balanced, but it is complete. In other words, if spending exceeds taxes then the hole must be filled via borrowing. This borrowing isn’t paid for in the distant future long after we’re all dead, but we start paying for it immediately in the form of interest and inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax that hits workers and savers the hardest. We can therefore think of federal spending as the true cost of our government more so than even federal revenue. Read FULL @ AnthonyGalli.com

Nuance matters. Economists generally support immigration, but to be a nation requires borders so there’s clearly some level at which we should limit foreigners. This doesn’t make one a xenophobe. Economists generally oppose tariffs, but to be a nation requires borders so there’s clearly some level at which we should tax foreigners. This doesn’t make one a protectionist. During the Industrial Revolution, the US had the most protected economy in the world with a tariff rate between 20% — 50%. By 1916, we became the most powerful country in history by surpassing the output of the entire British empire! The US then pressured nations to lower their tariffs so we could more easily flood their markets. But by the 1970s, America started to become a victim of our own success because by exporting so much stuff we made it easier to not just send our goods, but also our factories. Overall, just as I believe in a strong border even though I’m pro-immigrant I believe in a strong border even though I’m pro-trade! In other words, despite the fear-mongering of our globalist oligarchy I believe in borders. Now, I don’t think we should go back to a 50% tariff rate because as economists point out tariffs reduce economic growth, which FYI all taxes do, but if we’re going to have a government then we have to tax so the only honest way to judge import taxes is by comparing them to other taxes. I think a tariff is a less bad tax than an income, corporate, or payroll tax therefore I’d like to see us raise the former so we can cut and abolish some of the latter. Tariffs are legal under the Constitution. If we had a constitutional-size government and no welfare-warfare spending, a uniform tariff to cover the cost would certainly be a better way to raise revenue than an income or value-added tax. I believe in an across-the-board 10% tariff. In addition, I believe in an additional 5% — 10% “tyranny tariff” tacked onto nations that prohibit free speech such as Russia, China, and Iran because in our global economy free speech threatened anywhere threatens us everywhere. A tyranny tariff is in my opinion a more coherent way to discourage despotism than armed conflict or a hodgepodge of temporary sanctions. But let me be clear — I’m not saying we should increase federal revenue, but simply that a greater percentage of it should come from tariffs again. Tariffs are preferable to virtually every other federal tax because… It’ll reduce our trade deficit. Our trade deficit is mostly due to abandoning the gold standard, but an open economic border + cheap foreign labor has increased it too. Now, Milton Friedman was a trade deficit supporter because as he said… wouldn’t you want more stuff coming into your home than going out? Perhaps. But the moral question is would it be right? I think as individuals and nations we should strive to give back 10X more than we ever receive rather than trying to game our currency so as Milton Friedman concluded, “a sustained trade deficit is the best possible outcome….we get physical goods like cars, flash memory, oil, computers, toys and all sorts of other goods for cheaply produced paper known as currency.” In other words, we’re exporting our ability to manufacture physical goods in exchange for being the world’s paper-pusher. READ FULL ESSAY at www.AnthonyGalli.com

The free market creates prosperity. It makes things cheaper and better. But some people can’t even afford “cheap” so in the richest country in human history should We the People just let struggling individuals go without basic necessities like food, healthcare, and housing? If your answer's “yes” well then most voters have thus far disagreed with you whereby since the New Deal, no matter who’s been in office, the welfare state has only ever grown, therefore, for better or worse, Americans will not accept “yes” as an answer so then the question becomes, “What’s the best way to provide basic necessities?” The answer has thus far been to make them free for those who can’t afford them. But I think rather than a hodgepodge of anti-poverty programs, which just exacerbate poverty, we should eliminate poverty itself! The poverty line is about $12K per year so let’s guarantee people can get that amount… NIT Milton Friedman supported a Negative Income Tax, which is where “earners above a certain level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money.” If Person A has an income of $50K and Person B has an income of $10K then if the break-even income was $24K with a 50% NIT then Person A would pay taxes whereas Person B would receive $7K. If a person had no income they’d receive $12K. "In my opinion, the negative income tax is more compatible with the philosophy and aims of the proponents of limited government and maximum individual freedom than with the philosophy and aims of the proponents of the welfare state and greater government control of the economy." Proponents say it would effectively eliminate the welfare trap, poverty, and streamline benefits. The US has a version of NIT in the Earned Income Tax Credit, but one has to work to qualify for it. A political compromise could be to abolish Medicaid, SNAP, Housing Assistance, TANF, and CHIP in order to repeal the work requirement and increase the credit, therefore, making EITC into a full NIT. In 2000, Milton Friedman said that a universal basic income was "simply another way to introduce a negative income tax.” UBI A Universal Basic Income is where the government gives money to every citizen on a monthly or annual basis. But I think there’s five key structural differences between NIT and UBI: The first is a person receive’s less money the more one earns with NIT, which could disincentivize work more than UBI. The second difference is that NIT would theoretically cost less than UBI because if the goal is to eliminate poverty then only people with no income would receive the full $12K whereas with UBI everyone would. The third difference is that with NIT there’d be more political pressure to keep it low because fewer people would be receiving it whereas with UBI since everyone would be receiving money it’s easier for people to think “we should make those people over there pay for it!" The fourth difference is in terms of payouts NIT is a bit more abstract where politicians could more easily jiggle with the level & rate without the same visceral response as giving everyone a higher or lower standard check. The fifth difference is in terms of pay-ins UBI has greater flexibility. The taxes received from NIT should be more than enough to cover the cost of those who get money whereas for better or worse UBI’s funding source could come from anywhere. Andrew Yang wanted to pay for his UBI proposal with a VAT tax, which is in my opinion a terrible tax because it’s overcomplicated and hidden from customers so it’s easier for politicians to evade responsibility for higher prices. In my opinion, a better funding source would be the rising value of a natural resource like oil or land. But the problem with NIT and UBI is every election cycle there’ll be politicians who promise to give out more money. Elections would increasingly turn into auctions with other people’s money. If payouts are tied to pay-ins then at least it’d be harder for politicians to cave to voters’ short-term desires, but just like with Social Security, which is a version of UBI, it now takes 2.3 workers to pay for one current beneficiary so the government has a poor track record of limiting its spending to what it receives in taxes. Job Guarantee My preferred way to effectively eliminate poverty is through a job guarantee. Anyone who wants a job should be able to get one even if it’s something so simple as sweeping the streets. As long as there are problems in the world there is a job to be done! Anyone who pays taxes should support this policy over our existing system because if you had to work for your money then shouldn’t those who effectively take your money by force? But not all Job Guarantees are created equal! CHARACTER LIMIT MAXED. You can read the full essay at AnthonyGalli.com.