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
Read Former White House CEA Chairman Kevin Hassett’s Interview of Ed Conard in National Review In National Review, Kevin Hassett, the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, asks Ed Conard to defend conservative free market capitalism and how it promotes entrepreneurial risk-taking that has grown middle-class incomes faster than Europe. Five Questions for Ed Conard National Review Online August 21, 2020 1) Many liberals claim capitalism no longer works for the middle and working class. Is it true? No. According to the Congressional Budget Office, prior to the pandemic, middle-class incomes had grown 60 percent more than inflation since 1980. The income of the poorest… Read More
My Oxford University Press Chapter, “The Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies,” Is Available Free Online Oxford University Press has provided free online access to my chapter, “The Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies,” for a limited time in their new book “United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality.” In the chapter, I argue, “Inequality is mostly the result of an increasing premium on returns from risk and high-skilled labor ushered in by technological disruption and the feedback loop of elite talent working to increase their own productivity—a logical outcome when properly trained talent constrains growth. The answer … lies in increasing the ratio of high-… Read More
Ed Conard Discusses His Oxford University Chapter at Harvard’s Program on Constitutional Government Ed Conard recently joined Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield to discuss his Oxford University Press chapter, “The Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies,” at Harvard University’s Program on Constitutional Government. The video, audio, and text of his speech and the Q&A session are available below. Opening Speech AUDIO Q&A PART 1 AUDIO Q&A PART 2 AUDIO 14 Questions for Ed Conard Tom Palmer (Snr. Fellow, Cato Institute): Do we have the ability to recruit high-skilled labor from around the world? Can we identify and restrict immigration only to them? What happens to… Read More
My chapter, “The Economics of Inequality,” joins Saez, Burkhauser, and other distinguished economists in Oxford University Press’ new “United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality” In my chapter, “Economics of Inequality in High-Wage Economies," I argue, “Inequality is mostly the result of an increasing premium on returns from risk and high-skilled labor ushered in by technological disruption and the feedback loop of elite talent working to increase their own productivity—a logical outcome when properly trained talent constrains growth. The answer … lies in increasing the ratio of high- to low-skilled workers chiefly by training and recruiting more high-scoring domestic and immigrant workers. Rather than greater income redistribution slowing growth by dampening high-skilled productivity and incentives… Read More
CBS Sunday Morning Features “The Upside of Inequality” “CBS Sunday Morning” feature on inequality, which includes Hitler, Marie Antoinette, beatings, starving paupers in coffins, Thomas Piketty, and poverty statistics that don’t account for the trillion dollars America spends helping the poor, gives me 20 seconds to defend capitalism. Here are all the things I said that they chose not to use. Read More
Lies, Damned Lies, and Steve Rattner’s Statistics Lies, Damned Lies, And Steve Rattner’s Statistics If liberal economists could win the economic debate with honest arguments, they would make them. As President Reagan once joked, “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” In his New York Times op-ed, Steve Rattner adds his name to the list of people willing to compromise their reputation to mislead the American people. No serious economist would measure a president’s performance blindly from the day they stepped into… Read More
Ed Conard Featured in CQ Researcher Report “Inequality in America: Can the Growing Wealth Gap Be Closed?” CQ Researcher released its latest report “Inequality in America: Can the Growing Wealth Gap Be Closed?” featuring an interview with Ed Conard. Excerpts from the report: On incentivizing risk-taking to grow the economy: Edward Conard, a visiting scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), calls the wealth gap an inevitable byproduct of an economy that prospers by rewarding innovators and risk-takers. Before the coronavirus struck, the United States had enjoyed a strong economy with low unemployment rates and rising wages. After an 11-year bull market, the Dow Jones Industrial… Read More
Joe Scarborough and Ed Conard Debate Pres. Trump’s Immigration Plan on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Joe Scarborough and I debate President Trump’s new immigration plan and its emphasis on high-skilled immigration to produce economic growth on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Read More
My new National Review op-ed explains why CBO expects the tax cut to pay for itself Is the tax cut expected to pay for itself? Yes — if we use the Congressional Budget Office’s forecast and any economically logical standard, the tax cut makes both current and future generations better off. The CBO now expects the nominal gross domestic product to increase nearly $750 billion more per year by 2020 than in its forecast prior to the tax cut. It originally attributed about one third of that growth to the tax-cut legislation — even by that estimate, the cut more than pays for itself. The CBO… Read More
Read My USA Today Op-Ed: “Tax Cut Law Helps Future Generations” Tax Cut Law Helps Future Generations A one-time increase in gross domestic product that generations can enjoy for years to come is not a 'sugar high' Borrowing to buy an asset that produces more income than the interest expense makes your children richer. The debt doesn’t make them poorer. Without this basic understanding of finance, deficit hawks can’t distinguish deficit-financed consumption from borrowing that increases the economy’s capacity to pay the interest on the borrowed money, including any resulting increase in the interest rate. The latter makes future generations richer,… 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
- 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
- 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
Read My New National Review Op-Ed: Free-Market Republicans Risk Irrelevance by Ignoring the Concerns of Blue-Collar Voters Free-market Republicans must recognize they can’t build a winning coalition without the president’s supporters. In our two-party democracy, agendas without winning coalitions are largely irrelevant. Edward Conard National Review Online June 16, 2018 Prior to the president’s victory, protectors of free enterprise, foreign-policy hawks, and social conservatives controlled the GOP by giving each other what they wanted most: lower taxes and restrained spending; larger defense budgets; and judges who limited the federal government. President Trump’s supporters upended this coalition, seized control of the GOP, and won the presidency with victories… Read More
Debating Inequality, Innovation, and High-Skilled Immigration on “Conversations with Bill Kristol” Bill Kristol and I debate income inequality, innovation, and why only high-skilled immigration can grow the American economy fast enough to pay for retiring baby boomers without damaging the economy with high taxes and slower growth. Watch here on "Conversations with Bill Kristol." Read More