With oil prices at a nearly seven-year low, Congress is negotiating a deal to end the 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports. Opponents of the measure claim this could hurt jobs at refineries, but a study from the American Petroleum Institute found that removing the ban would support nearly 1 million additional jobs at the peak.

Hillary Clinton’s latest policy proposal would prevent U.S. companies from leaving the U.S. tax system by using an “exit tax.” This plan does not address the actual problem that the U.S. has become a tax-unfriendly environment for businesses. The U.S. maintains the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and similar anti-inversion laws would send 42,000 jobs overseas — many management and headquarters positions.

Eakinomics: Progressive Pretzel Logic

No, not Steely Dan. The reasoning necessary to arrive at the left’s preferred policy position: have the government do it. The basic game plan is the same in all policy areas. Take the labor market, for example. Step 1: Assert that growth and higher productivity simply do not help the average worker. It’s not true, but say it enough and people will believe it is true (an insight traceable to Nazi Propaganda Minister Paul Goebbels); massaging a few misleading statistics helps, too. Step 2: If the private enterprise game is rigged then compensation should be the business of the government — minimum wages, maternity leave, family leave, executive compensation, overtime, and what kind of coffee is in the break room (ok, I made that one up). Move to <insert policy area here>. Rinse. Repeat.

The weird thing is that it is widely understood that Americans have a tremendous distrust of its government (and other large institutions), question its competency, and indict its ethics. Yet, the progressive solution is to hand these very same people the keys to our lives. Welcome to the pretzel jungle.

It gets weirder. Consider this from one of the left’s best megaphones. This is a beauty. Yes, the government is corrupt and pursuing an agenda supposedly at odds with the greater good. But why — because the private sector made it do it! It’s the private sector’s fault either way! With that kind of (pretzel) logic no facts can contradict the progressive claim for the universal superiority of governmental approaches. Never mind that the facts on the ground are that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were a huge part of the housing meltdown, were the blueprint for crony capitalism (private profits backed by the taxpayer) before it became fashionable, have been handed life imprisonment by the Obama Administration (to its credit), and have been handed a death sentence by even the most bipartisan of proposed housing finance reforms. It is just not okay for private enterprise to think about stepping into the mortgage market.

Have a pretzel (unsalted, no choice — it’s a federal program).

From the Forum

Would An “Exit Tax” Work? by Gordon Gray, AAF Director of Fiscal Policy
 
Five Things that Should be in the U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan by Rachel Hoff, AAF Director of Defense Analysis

Fact of the Day

Nearly 16 million Medicare Part B beneficiaries will see premiums increase by 16 percent next year.