LATEST
Ed Conard Discusses his WSJ op-ed, “The Crippling Cost of 70% Tax Rates,” on Bill Martinez Live
Ed Conard discusses his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Crippling Cost of 70% Tax Rates," and how unleashing the forces of capitalism drives innovation and middle-class prosperity, on Bill Martinez Live. Read More
Ed Conard Debates the Democrats’ Green New Deal on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast”
Ed Conard debates the long-term cost of the Democrats’ Green New Deal with Neil Cavuto on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.” Read More
Ed Explains Why High Marginal Tax Rates Hurt the Middle Class with WSJ’s Paul Gigot on Fox News’s “Journal Editorial Report”
I explain why high marginal tax rates hurt the middle class with Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot on Fox News’s “Journal Editorial Report.” Read More
Ed Debates Liberal Darling of Davos on BBC’s Business Daily
I debate the liberal darling of Davos Rutger Bregman on the only true way to increase middle and working class incomes—by not stifling growth and innovation with high taxes. Read More
Ed Conard and Stuart Varney Try to Take the Green New Deal Seriously, But It Isn’t Easy
Stuart Varney and I try to take Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal seriously, but it isn’t easy. It would plunge the U.S. into deep recession, hurt middle-class workers and eventually lead to an economy with enormously high-cost energy and much slower growth. Read More
My Op-ed Today’s WSJ: Is the Tax Cut Paying For Itself? By a Mile.
Tax Reform Is Covering Its Costs Faster growth is on track to outpace debt in the next decade. Is the 2017 tax reform paying for itself? It’s a complicated question, but the critics have made up their minds. Outlets like the Tax Policy Center claim the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has diminished federal revenue rather than increase it as some supporters predicted. Other skeptics lament surging government deficits and debt. Some point to last year’s brief economic spurt as evidence of the law’s failure to drive long-term growth. Even… Read More
Ed Conard Explains Why Howard Schultz Isn’t Running as a Democrat on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast”
Ed Conard explains on Fox Business’s "Cavuto: Coast to Coast” why Howard Schultz is reluctant to run as a Democrat despite his innovation increasing the demand, and therefore the wages, of low-skilled workers, something we should all celebrate. Read More
Read My New National Review Op-Ed: “Let’s Not Kid Ourselves About 70% Tax Rates”
Let’s Not Kid Ourselves About 70% Tax Rates Their only justification is to confiscate others’ money. My op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal argued that academic justifications for 70 percent marginal tax rates, such as Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez’s, are nothing more than a veneer intended to deceive a wider audience that doesn’t know better. Saez’s expansion of his justification for confiscatory taxes in the New York Times does little to prove otherwise. Diamond and Saez’s original argument for a 70 percent tax rate – that it would enhance both tax revenue and social welfare – ignores the… Read More
Why High Marginal Taxes Hurt America’s Middle Class on Fox Business’s “Varney & Co.”
Ed Conard joins Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network's “Varney & Co.” to discuss his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed "The Crippling Cost of 70% Tax Rates" and Sen. Elizabeth Warren's tax proposal. Read More- Read My New Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: “The Crippling Cost of 70% Tax Rates”
The Crippling Cost of 70% Tax Rates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal would smother investment and innovation, leaving America poorer. Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spent her first few weeks on Capitol Hill calling for a 70% top marginal income-tax rate, and suddenly the debate over optimal rates has reopened. To support her charge, some liberals are citing a 2011 study by economists Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, which advocates for confiscatory upper-range tax rates. But a quick look at their analysis reveals grave caveats that only an advocate of higher taxes could… Read More 
Extraordinary Circumstances in 1950s Overwhelmed Economic Policy
Economists who claim fast growth in the 1950s (when the marginal tax rate was high and government spending was low) indicates high taxes and spending don’t slow growth are playing you for a sucker and shouldn’t be trusted. Extraordinary circumstances in the 1950s overwhelmed economic policy. From my book The Upside of Inequality: Even academics, on whom we depend for the truth, write papers with provocative conclusions intended to garner media attention based on simplifying assumptions overlooked by a time-pressed media and their audience. This is how Piketty and Saez… Read More
Corporate R&D Creates Knowledge Spillovers That Increase Entrepreneurial Activity
New research by Tania Babina and Sabrina Howell finds “a one standard deviation increase in R&D is associated with an 18.7 percent increase in entrepreneurial spawning”—employees leaving to start new firms. It also finds “the results are robust to including four-digit SIC code fixed effects, suggesting that narrow industries do not explain the result.” The authors claim that “for the parent firm, the spawning effect of R&D yields no obvious contractual benefits, nor is it observably costly.” They observe “that a remarkable 88 percent of spawns are located in the… Read More
Rising Median Household Income Dispels Commonly Repeated Misperception That Incomes Are No Longer Rising
Rising median household income dispels commonly repeated misperception (disingenuously citing peak to trough comparisons) that incomes are no longer rising. Read More
20-40% of Declining Workforce Participation from Prime Working-Age Men Dropping Out (for Less Than 2 Years) to Increase Their Leisure
New research finds: The rise of in-and-outs [men 25 to 54 years old who leave the workforce for 2 years or less] has [increased] steadily over time. … While in-and-outs only comprised 1.5% of the prime age male population in any given month in 1984, this share had risen to 2.9% by 2010. Given that there were nearly 62 million prime age men in the US in 2010, the increase in this share represents about 1 million additional men out of work at any point in time due to this… Read More
Evidence Indicates 75% of Business Pass-Through Income Is Owners’ Labor Income
Contrary to Thomas Piketty’s far-fetched claim that “[human capital] is far less consequential than one might imagine,” a new NBER paper finds “top earners are predominantly working rich,” mainly “undiversified working-age owners of midmarket firms in skill-intensive industries,” who “derive most of their income from human capital, not physical or financial capital,” and that, “Less than 13% of people in the 99.9th percentile derive most of their income from interest, rents, and other capital income.” “Match[ing] 83% of top 1% individuals born in 1980-1982 to their parents,” and “classif[ing] an… Read More
HIGHLIGHTS
A New Year’s Resolution Worth Making
Real Clear Politics By Edward Conard | December 31, 2014 With oil prices plunging below $60 a barrel, the U.S. economy growing at an annualized 5 percent last quarter, and the Dow soaring above 18,000, it's easy to overlook academic research published in 2014 that will likely have a lasting impact on economic debate. In particular, a half-dozen highly credible studies debunked widely-held economic myths. Each of these studies illustrate the need to confront wishful thinking with a great deal of skepticism. The year began with Harvard's Raj Chetty and… Read More
Ed Conard on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
On the show, Jon Stewart and Ed discuss Unintended Consequences and why risk-taking isn't the enemy of a properly functioning economy. Read More
Ed Conard debates Vice President Biden’s former chief economist, Jared Bernstein, on income inequality
At the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles on Monday, a top-level discussion of income inequality, economic mobility, and poverty revealed differing interpretations of the data, their causes, and their implications for public policy. AEI visiting scholar Edward Conard faced off against Vice President Biden’s former chief economist Jared Bernstein. The Bernstein/Conard debate over inequality went something like this: Bernstein suggested that inequality was bad for the bottom of the wage scale, as evidenced by stagnant or falling wages at the lower end of the income distribution, relative to many… Read More
Ed Conard defeats the IQ2 Motion: “Income Inequality Impairs the American Dream of Upward Mobility”
Despite a highly partisan crowd of voters, Ed defeated the IQ2 Motion: "Income Inequality Impairs the American Dream of Upward Mobility.” Thirty percent of the voters moved to Ed’s side of the motion—one of the largest swings in the history of IQ2. Opening Statement If income inequality truly impaired mobility, there would be telltale signs: Growing inequality would have reduced mobility. It hasn’t. Even Emanuel Saez, of the liberal Piketty and Saez duo, admits, the chance of a low-income child reaching any higher level of income has increased. Economies with more… Read More
Ed Conard debates Nobel Prize winning economist Joe Stiglitz
Ed and Joe Stiglitz face off on economics and income inequality. Read More
The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy
In the New York Times Magazine Adam Davidson comments on Ed Conard's new book. Read More
Please Don’t Soak the Rich
Wall Street Journal review of Ed book, Unintended Consequences. Read More
Ed Conard on Fareed Zakaria
Ed discusses his new book and the value of risk taking for the economy. Read More
Ed Conard debates Alan Krueger on Obama’s economic record and if he’s to blame for slow growth on Bloomberg TV
Given the last five years of economic activity, is Obama the worst president since WWII? Read More
No Role for Fed in Income Distribution
NEW YORK TIMES by Ed Conard | October 27, 2014 The Federal Reserve has neither the mandate to redistribute wealth nor the tools to do it effectively. Should it try, it will likely fail. Were it to succeed, it would likely lower middle- and working-class incomes. Either way, it would violate one of America’s founding principles — no taxation without representation — as well as its mandate to promote stable prices. A blatant political act like this would justify Congressional intervention and jeopardize the Fed’s critically needed independence. A Federal… Read More
Ed Conard on ABC News
Ed argues that innovation and incentives improve the U.S. economy. Read More
Rescuing Subprime Borrowers Won’t Fix the Economy
Fortune Magazine By Edward Conard | June 11, 2014 In their new book, House of Debt, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi make a persuasive argument that a decline in consumption caused by a drop in home prices slowed the economic recovery more than a weakened banking system. Even if banks were strong, they argue, the demand for loans would still be weak. Mian and Amir Sufi blame a sharp increase in savings by highly levered homeowners for the fall off in consumption and borrowing; as a result, the authors urge taxpayers to… Read More