Publications

Thanks to Sen. Lamar Alexander and a group of former Governors in the Senate, the states now have power to tax your access to the Internet. Sen. Alexander’s blocking move prevented the Senate from extending the Internet Tax Moratorium that has been standard public policy under both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

By asserting state primacy over telecommunications policy and e-commerce, Alexander and his allies are substituting their own twisted constitutional construction for the wisdom of the Founders.

In the past three years, the federal budget has exploded by more than one-half trillion dollars, under a Republican Congress and a Republican president. This paper presents a specific strategy for cutting programs and streamlining government. The benefits of a reduction in government size and modernization of government mission would be enormous—a windfall that would lower the tax burden and fund new, critical policy initiatives.

Some suggest that proposals for Social Security reform should be judged by the degree to which they require general revenue financing. But this flawed yardstick is biased against personal account plans, because it doesn't accurately measure transition costs, and doesn't account for the dramatically increased benefits of personal accounts. The only way to evaluate reform plans is to weigh all of the costs against all of the benefits.

This guide answers some of the questions about the safety concerns associated with prescription drug importation and whether consumers ought to have the right to buy imported drugs even if they are aware of the significant risks.

Up until now, establishment Washington has assumed that any personal account option for Social Security would involve at most 2 percentage points or so of the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax. But earlier this year, IPI published a plan offering a progressive personal account option for Social Security which involves a much larger personal account option, averaging 6.4 percentage points. That plan has now been officially scored by the Chief Actuary of Social Security regarding how it would impact Social Security, and in particular the long term financial deficits of that program.

This is the memorandum from the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration, Steve Goss, estimating the financial effects of Peter Ferrara's Progressive Proposal for Social Security Personal Accounts, published by IPI.

Click on the link at the top right "Full Text PDF" to view or download the document.

A conservative, Republican governor in Alabama is championing a massive new tax-and-spend scheme, replete with class warfare rhetoric and hidden taxes. This represents a complete departure from the tax cuts and fiscal discipline that have been a hallmark of conservative philosophy and Republican aspirations for decades.

Puerto Rico faces a daunting economic challenge at the beginning of the 21st century. The Mainland and Puerto Rico must enter into a new contract that rejects the failed policies of the past. Through the tax, regulatory and fiscal reforms proposed in this study, Puerto Rico can become a thriving international center of commerce and innovation, to the benefit of both the Island and the Mainland.

In the debate of legalizing the reimportation of prescription drugs into the U.S., some advocates claim that reimportation is a free trade issue, and that attempts to prevent reimportation are barriers against free trade. But manufacturers of such goods must preserve their ability to price discriminate, according to Dr. Richard Epstein. Price discrimination allows the "low demanders" to participate in the market. The result of large scale reimportation would be to restrict needed sales of drugs overseas, and would sap the incentive to innovate new products. Imposing statutory restrictions on reimportation is an effective substitute for a valid, if ineffective, contractual restraint on alienation that makes sense in light of the basic domestic decision to grant the full patent monopoly.

Proponents claim that legalizing prescription drug reimportation from overseas countries will lower the cost of drugs to U.S. consumers, and some proponents claim that allowing reimportation is a "free trade" issue. But reimportation is a Trojan Horse for importing the deficient regulatory regimes of foreign countries, rather than importing their prices.