In 1958, per capita health expenditures were $134. This may seem astonishingly small, but it actually includes everything, inclusive of care paid for by government or private health insurers. A worker earning the average wage in 1958 ($1.98) would have had to work 118 hours—nearly 15 days–to cover this expense.

The 812% increase in the price of college textbooks since 1978 makes the run-up in house prices and housing bubble (and subsequent crash) in the 2000s seem rather inconsequential.

A new survey finds that 55% of Americans have received government benefits from at least one of the six most well-known federal entitlement programs. Those would be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, unemployment benefits, and/or food stamps.

As with taxes and spending, we cannot necessarily conclude that more regulation is “bad” or “good,” but it would be helpful for experts and voters alike to see a rigorous accounting for government regulation.

Scheduled changes in tax rates for income, dividends and businesses for each state show a wide range of changes in marginal effective tax rates. The highest rate on wage income will be 51.9 percent in California, followed by 51.7 percent in New York City.

A look at how individual states have increased their tax collections over the past decade. Which state comes out on top in terms of additional taxes collected per resident, and which on the bottom?

Now that HHS has released all of their guidance concerning the minimum benefits that insurance plans must offer to be sold in the state, it becomes apparent that insurance will be no more affordable in most states than it was pre-Obamacare.

Thanks in part to a huge 17% increase in U.S. oil production so far this year, gasoline prices are now at their lowest level since  December 2011.

What do the Progressive Policy Institute, former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have in common? An idea for rolling back overregulation.

China's patent office received more patent applications in 2011 than any other country, followed by the U.S. and Japan.

Back in 1995, the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) estimated state and local unfunded pension liabilities at $200 billion in fiscal year 1992 (nearly $300 billion in today's dollars). The most recent estimate for unfunded liabilities today for these same entities comes from The States Project, a joint venture of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Their report puts the number... More

The governments of the United States and Britain are embarking on different approaches to helping their poor and unemployed, and one of them may regret its policy decisions.

Capping itemized deductions, a tax-reform proposal supported by Democrats as well as Republicans,  would hit taxpayers hardest in states like New York, New Jersey, California, and other so-called blue states known for their high taxes, high costs, extensive public services, and large public-sector workforces. Current federal tax policy benefits blue-state taxpayers disproportionately.

A new study looks at the cost of providing lump sum payments to recent government retirees for unused sick and vacation days and finds it extraordinarily costly to the states.

State governments and their localities owe more than $7 trillion in various kinds of debt, according to a new study.

How much of each state government's budget comes from federal aid? This map shows the range is from 49 percent to 2 percent.

Congress is having trouble agreeing on a deficit reduction plan. This interactive tool lets you try your hand at cutting the federal budget.

Investors in their 40s appear most sensitive to the effects of anticipated tax increases.

The Census data show that last year a net total of nearly 364,000 people moved out of the 28 states that at that time did not protect private-sector employees from being forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment and into one of the 22 Right to Work states. (Since the beginning of this year, two more states, Indiana and Michigan, have enacted Right to Work laws.)

In 2011, Medicare and Medicaid made a combined $51 billion in improper payments, according to a new report from the GOA. To put it another way, 6% of total spending in the two programs is wasted because of a) fraud and b) bureaucrats and contractors doing some of the same work.

Over the last 12 months the predictions for whole-year growth have changed drastically because of worsening performance in developed countries, especially Europe.

November’s disappointing revenues stand in stark contrast to recent news that California is leading the nation in job growth.This serves as a sobering reminder that, while the economy is expanding, it is doing so at a slow and uneven pace that will require the State to exercise care and discipline in how its fiscal affairs are managed in the coming year," said the state's controller.

For many in France on welfare, work cannot bring a substantial improvement over the benefits they already earn from the state.

As with many distributional questions, it’s a little tough to say whether raising the retirement age makes Social Security more or less progressive. But it’s pretty clearly wrong to say, as Krugman does, that a higher retirement age is “hugely regressive.”

There is a very bad tendency in Washington to wield tax revenue estimates with certainty, as though the figures were money in the bank. In reality, we should view these revenue figures with a huge lump of salt – especially when it comes to taxing high-income taxpayers.

More

The U.S. federal government's current income tax rates are more than capable of collecting higher amounts of taxes in a healthier economy. That many in the federal government are so actively pursuing higher effective marginal income tax rates today is really an indication that they don't believe the economy is going to be getting healthier any time soon!

Government benefits replace almost every dollar that people (in the neighborhood of the poverty line, at least) lost in the labor market. That's a 100 percent tax -- for every dollar a person earns (loses) he loses (gains) a dollar in government benefits, respectively.

More

Small business owners as a group are now the most pessimistic they have been since the third quarter of 2010, according to the latest Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index.

Commercial property faces higher tax rates than residential property in 39 states even though residential property often leads in assessed value.