With several European countries looking to bolster their budgets by taxing the wealthy, Sven R. Larson considers the track record of wealth taxes on the Continent. As he writes in The European Conservative, such taxes are a “politically desperate lifeline for a fiscally desperate government” and more likely than not to have a detrimental effect on public coffers.
The Paper-Pushers Who (Barely) Control America’s Skies
Fans of the 1999 movie Pushing Tin will recall frenetic scenes of air traffic controllers working to keep airliners from colliding in crowded skies. The current reality, writes John Tierney in City Journal, is far worse. Control tasks at U.S. airports today are still exchanged using paper “flight strips”. In contrast to this “international disgrace”, writes Tierney, European and even Canadian control towers have gone nearly all-digital.