How the tax code stupidly prevents companies like Apple from spending $1.2 trillion in the U.S.

The death of Steve Jobs last October hasn’t slowed down Apple very much: sales for the new third generation iPad have already broken records, the company has debuted a (possibly) new logo featuring a groovy, retro-flecked rainbow apple, and CEO Tim Cook announced plans to spend almost half of its $100 billion cash hoard on issuing its first dividend since 1995 and buying back up to $10 billion in shares.

Though Apple has consistently proven a bright spot amid the generally gloomy economic news of recent years, even it is not immune to the havoc so often wreaked by our labyrinthine and … Read more...

The Obama Jobs Speech Proposes a Solution and Sparks Tax Debate

President Barack Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday night seemed to provide a blip of hope against a backdrop of unrelenting economic malaise, political gridlock in the capital, and the recent news that job growth had ground to a halt in August, the worst performance since September 2010. In an uncharacteristic display of executive leadership, President Obama abandoned the conciliatory, above-the-partisan-fray tone that has characterized much of his Presidency as well as the sweepingly inspirational, and conveniently vague, platitudes that swept him to electoral victory and, sounding confident and even mildly combative, delivered his plan to get America working again.

Despite a bevy of … Read more...