Today, John Cochrane demonstrates how wealth taxes discourage investment, spur capital flight, and ultimately shrink the tax base. Michael R. Auslin writes on how the Declaration of Independence was drafted and how it has anchored America through times of turmoil. And Hoover’s Technology Policy Accelerator receives a $2.5 million grant to launch the new Tech Futures Lab.
The Economy
Wealth taxes are back on the policy agenda, framed as a way to raise revenue from the ultrarich. In this Grumpy Economist Weekly Rant, Senior Fellow John H. Cochrane evaluates wealth taxes using a simple economic test: whether a tax can raise revenue while doing minimal damage to the economy. From an economist’s perspective, he argues, permanent wealth taxes perform poorly, because they tax returns to investment, reducing incentives to build businesses, invest, and grow the economy. Cochrane explains why predictable wealth taxes encourage capital flight, reduce investment, and ultimately shrink the tax base. He also explores the paradox that only an unexpected, one-time wealth tax avoids distorting incentives—while showing why such a policy is not credible in practice. From an economic standpoint, the alternative is to tax consumption rather than investment, preserving incentives to save, build, and grow while avoiding the valuation and liquidity problems inherent in taxing wealth. Watch his rant here.
America @ 250
Drawing from his upcoming book on the Declaration of Independence, Distinguished Research Fellow Michael R. Auslin argues that the document remains the nation’s central unifying text as America approaches its 250th anniversary. He cites President Gerald Ford’s 1976 description of the Declaration as a fixed “star of freedom” whose moral claims endure despite political turmoil. Auslin recounts how the document was drafted quickly, edited heavily, and adopted by sovereign states wary of centralized power, yet it still implied national unity through its language and shared pledge. Though it did not expressly mention the rights of women or opposition to slavery, Auslin says, it still inspired movements that formed to advance those freedoms. Read more here.
Technology
The Hoover Institution’s Technology Policy Accelerator program has been awarded a $2.5 million grant from the Hewlett Foundation to launch the Tech Futures Lab, an initiative designed to better anticipate potential strategic technological surprises and to help the United States strengthen resilience through improved planning and risk management. The grant enables Hoover to pursue this crucial mission at a time when America faces a hinge-of-history moment. The many technological advances underway—from artificial intelligence and bioengineering to quantum technologies, energy innovations, and space capabilities—are accelerating the pace of change and introducing a new era of outsize possibilities and uncharted risks. China’s increased technological competencies and the rapid diffusion of capabilities across borders are compounding uncertainty and increasing the chance of strategic shocks that could leave the United States at a disadvantage. Read more here.
Higher Education
Writing at Washington Monthly, Visiting Fellow Markos Kounalakis argues that tighter visa vetting and other restrictions on incoming students imposed by the Trump administration in 2025 harmed the US economy and benefit China and other global rivals. Less publicized changes, such as what Kounalakis describes has occurred this year with the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, only further compound the problem. Kounalakis says the economic and diplomatic benefit to America of the world’s brightest students coming here to study far outweighs the risk of a few dozen spies using scholarship to attempt infiltration, a risk our security apparatus can certainly mitigate. What’s worse, Kounalakis says, he fears the damage being done now may not be reversible. “While [international] enrollment recovered somewhat during the Biden administration, our global competitors—Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia—used our insularity to recruit the world’s best,” he writes. Read more here.
The Presidency
In this piece for Defining Ideas, Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen tracks the progress of presidential libraries underway for three recent (and one current) presidents. What he finds will surprise few. Obama’s presidential library south of Chicago is way over budget and features a basketball court and a tall, oblong tower one Australian news presenter characterized as a “North Korean guard tower.” Biden’s presidential library is at the moment only a dream on a dreary National Archives webpage. Meanwhile, Trump’s planned Miami center will likely be gigantic. Whalen asks if this trend toward the gargantuan is necessary and ponders if presidential libraries should simply be . . . libraries? Read more here.
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