In his State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the need to focus on innovation, job creation, and global competitiveness as part of a strategy to “win the future.” Unfortunately, by signing Obamacare into law, the White House has endangered these very things. Until now, the United States has been the world leader in medical innovation, but this is by no means a given for the future. Due to burdensome, time-consuming regulations, medical innovation faces an uphill battle in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has …
It is a well known economic policy rule that if you want less of something you tax it, and if you want more of something you subsidize it. Policymakers frequently follow this rule to influence behavior. This is why there are “sin taxes” on things like alcohol and cigarettes, and also why “cap and trade” taxes carbon. This is why there are subsidies for education and for “green” technologies. If taxes and subsidies make any sense at all, they make sense when used to tax “bad” things and subsidize “good” …
