Articles

The compensation of Oklahoma’s government employees exceeds that of their private-sector counterparts. But a bigger problem is that we simply have too many government employees in this state: Oklahoma’s ratio of government employment to private-sector employment is a disturbing 5th highest in the country. Bringing this ratio in line with the national average would have saved Oklahoma taxpayers $2.8 billion last year.

The financial markets have taken on a lot of water recently. Congress has been bailing furiously. But are we doing anything to actually fix the leak?

A major industry has gotten in line to receive a bailout. It directly employs more than six million people. That’s a lot of people considering that there are a total of 300 million men, women, and children in the United States, of whom 137 million are currently employed (excluding farmers). So the workers in this industry constitute about four percent of all U.S. workers.

The year 2008 is not the first time our country has faced a debt and mortgage crisis with profound consequences for our freedom—our economic freedom, our political freedom, and even our national freedom.

In FY 2008, Oklahomans paid an estimated $34,569,140,000 in federal, state, and local taxes, such as income taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes, to name just a few.

"Supply-side" economics is the simple notion that tax rates affect growth. One of the key observations made by supply-siders is that policy makers should pay close attention to the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue-particularly since higher tax rates can reduce incentives to earn and report taxable income, which therefore means there is not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue.

The conventional wisdom-peddled by tax consumers and amplified by a largely sympathetic news media-says that, because of income-tax cuts signed into law in 2004, 2005, and 2006, Oklahoma's individual income tax revenues are declining.

There is now a wealth of evidence showing that higher tax burdens have negative effects on economic growth.

Under the dome at 23rd and Lincoln, bureaucrats and taxpayer-funded special-interest groups take your money and use it to lobby for more of your money.