As a follow-up to our earlier article about how tax law affects behavior, we offer this story. Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, hasn’t charged sales tax in most states since its founding in 1994. And it has taken some extreme measures to keep it that way. Among them: Staff traveling around the U.S. [...]

Does anyone think that changing tax law doesn’t change business behavior? Some politicians seem to think their actions won’t change behavior so they can do a simple calculation to get more tax revenue. For example, California thinks that it can simply force on-line retailers to begin collecting sales taxes for on-line transactions and they will [...]

The head of one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers is calling for a new American revolution to save manufacturing. Andrew Liveris, chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical, warns that the United States is heading for a dismal future if it does not wake up to global realities and rally to save manufacturing. In speeches, [...]

The Monopoly board game originated during the Great Depression. At first its inventor, Charles Darrow, could not interest manufacturers. Parker Brothers turned the game down, citing “52 design errors.” But Darrow produced his own copies of the game, and Parker Brothers finally bought Monopoly. By 1935, the New York Times was reporting that “leading all other board games … is the season’s craze, ‘Monopoly,’ the game of real estate.”
Most of us are familiar with the object of Monopoly: the accumulation of property on which one places houses and hotels, and from which one receives revenue. Many of us have a favorite token. Perennially popular is the top hat, which symbolizes the sort of wealth to which Americans who work hard can aspire. The top hat is a token that has remained in the game, even while others have changed over the decades.
One’s willingness to play Monopoly depends on a few conditions—for instance, a predictable number of “Pay Income Tax” cards.

One of the biggest take-aways from the recent market meltdown, for many people, was the rediscovery of many kinds of fun that don’t cost money–a lot of the things that people did years ago before the advent of 3D movies, gourmet restaurants, traveling soccer teams and endless consumerism. “All men seek happiness. This is without [...]

It’s all About Fiduciary Duty to Your Clients Everyone who listens to the news, either on the radio or TV, knows that the SEC is going after Goldman Sachs. There are significant problems to be ironed out. If, as is alleged by the SEC, there was criminal activity at Goldman, then someone needs to be [...]

Now that we have passed the Health Care Reform Bill that was scored by the CBO to say it is not going to increase the deficit and over the long  term actually reduce the deficit, Congress is now floating the idea of a VAT, a Value Added Tax, like Europe. To me this is an [...]

Investing, in the final analysis, is a matter of faith. This, I think, is an important fundamental to understand. I am not writing of “blind faith.” Nor, necessarily, religious faith. It is my conviction that there is no such thing as blind faith. If a person acts blindly, it is not out of faith; it [...]

Larry P. Arnn, the twelfth president of Hillsdale College, received his B.A. from Arkansas State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. From 1977 to 1980, he also studied at the London School of Economics and at Worcester College, Oxford University, where he served as director of research for [...]

We are all familiar with the idea of “the wisdom of Solomon” because he figured out how to discern the real mother of an infant by threatening to cut the infant in half and each woman could have half an infant. Of course the real mother said, “No, give it to the other woman” and [...]