Why Inflation Isn't a Moral Issue | Timothy B. Lee | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why Inflation Isn't a Moral Issue | Timothy B. Lee | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The problem with this line of argument is that even stable money is a bad long-term store of value. That’s because modern capital markets offer you the opportunity to not just preserve the value of your money but dramatically increase it by investing in productive assets. You can buy stocks, bonds, or real estate, all of which generate a stream of income that increases the value of your investment."

Those options have more risk (than zero inflation money), variability, are harder to convert, and have higher barriers to entry. Those options are great for rich but not for poor.

"If I invest my life savings in oil, and then Saudi Arabia discovers a massive new oil well that causes the price of oil to drop by 10 percent, it would be silly to say that Saudi Arabia has stolen 10 percent of my life savings. I just made a bad bet. Exactly the same point applies to money."

Money inflation is different. For one, it is government arbitrarily increasing the money supply.. No one has the ability to just increase the oil supply. Two, the government gets to use all of the benefits of the increased money supply. In effect it is a tax on people who hold money. Three, a massive increase in the amount of oil would hurt owners of oil but would help buyers of oil and would be good for the economy. But since the rate of inflation doesn't matter (as you say) there is no benefit to the economy from inflation. The only benefit is to the organization that inflates.

"if there aren’t enough dollars to go around, people start cutting back on their spending and the economy goes into recession"

There is plenty of money around -- people hardly worry about keeping pennies anymore because they have such little value. If there were problems where people needed to split a penny in order to do a transaction then you could say that there isn't enough money.

Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich | Daniel J. Mitchell | Cato Institute: Commentary: "trying to get more money from upper-income taxpayers is like playing whack-a-mole. So long as tax rates are high, rich people will figure out ways to protect their income.

It doesn’t take a tax genius; any rich person can make a phone call or hit a few computer keys and shift his or her investments to tax-free municipal bonds. It’s not good for the economy when capital gets diverted to help finance the excess spending of Detroit or California, but it’s an effective way of stiff-arming the IRS.

Or the rich can play the green-energy scam, getting all sorts of credits to offset their tax liabilities. That’s one way General Electric made lots of money and kept it all for shareholders."

"When the government taxes income, it raises the price of work compared to leisure. And because the tax code penalizes capital gains with higher rates, it also raises the price of saving and investment compared to consumption.

Yet work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn’t make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates."

"In 1980, when the top tax rate was 70 percent, rich people (those with incomes of more than $200,000) reported about $36 billion of income; the IRS collected about $19 billion of that amount. So what happened when President Ronald Reagan lowered the top tax rate to 28 percent by 1988? Did revenue fall proportionately, to about $8 billion?

Folks on the left thought that would happen, complaining that Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” would starve the government of revenue and give upper-income taxpayers a free ride.

But if we look at the 1988 IRS data, rich people paid more than $99 billion to Uncle Sam. That is, because rich taxpayers were willing to earn and report much more income, the government collected five times as much revenue with a lower rate."

Failed plot to blow up Ohio bridge highlights potential 'Occupy' link to violence | Fox News

Failed plot to blow up Ohio bridge highlights potential 'Occupy' link to violence | Fox News: "According to the Occupy Threat Center, a database established by data analytics company ListenLogic to analyze social media posts for threats to corporations from those associated with the 'Occupy' movement, leaders have called for physical destruction of buildings and violent action, and associated "hacktivist" groups have targeted financial and law enforcement institutions. Speakers at rallies around the nation have called for an uprising similar to the French Revolution."

I couldn't easily find any documentation of that. Is there documentation?