Washington, D.C. – Today, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) published the “Business Tax Index 2013: Best to Worst State Tax Systems for Entrepreneurship and Small Business.” The Index ranks the 50 states according to the costs of their tax systems for starting and growing a business.  (To view the online interactive map with state highlights, please click here.) Raymond J. Keating, chief economist for SBE...

By Lloyd Lim Some complain that deficit reduction will hurt the economy and that we should wait until the economy gets better.  The problem with this idea is that with high unemployment, stagnant wages, heavy regulation and a big debt that presages inflation, high interest rates and additional taxes, there is nothing to suggest that the economy is going to get much better.  In the 1990’s we had increased productivity due to computers. ...

By Tom Giovanetti, President of the Institute for Policy Innovation The “right” price for anything is the price that results from the interaction between supply and demand in a functioning marketplace. There’s nothing controversial about that—it’s how anyone with the most basic understanding of economics understands price. Governments often cannot resist meddling with prices. Typically, when a government intervenes in a market to...

By Ken Schoolland Federal and state politicians are eager to raise the minimum legal wage—again. They have raised the minimum legal wage many times before, but they complain that it is never enough. The last rise in the minimum wage wasn’t enough because the prices of food, clothing, and shelter keep going up faster than wages. Why do the prices of food, clothing, and shelter keep going up? Could this have something to do with the behavior...

By Stephen Zierak, Grassroot Institute of Hawaii Irresponsible management of government finances has caused Standard & Poor’s to drop its Illinois credit rating to A-.  This is not like your improvement in school that brought your C to an A-, thus making your parents pleased and proud you had finally learned something.  No, it is another step down the road towards junk bond status for one of our largest states.  S&P has ten...