Bloomberg View has an editorial suggesting elaborate regulations for advertising of hedge funds. The Bloomberg editorial recommends, among other things, that the hedge fund advertising materials should "be subject to outside review." That one really made me chuckle. I wonder how the Bloomberg editorial writers would feel about some government agency requiring their editorials to be "subject to outside review" before publication. Can it really not have occurred to the editorial writers that the same First Amendment that guarantees their own freedom of speech and of the press to write editorials without prepublication review also guarantees the freedom of speech of the hedge fund advertisers and the publications in which the advertisements appear?

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Edward Conard, author of Unintended Consequences, responds to Warren Buffett's op-ed calling for higher taxes:

If we tax, redistribute and consume income that otherwise would have been invested, the investable pool of savings declines. With a smaller pool of capital, less-attractive investment opportunities remain unfunded. Buffett tautologically claims investors will continue to invest in opportunities with expected returns above the cutoff point. Of course they will. Investment is lost at the margin.

Mr. Conard, like a number of other center-right figures, credits the federal interstate highway system for generating growth in the 1950s. I've got my doubts about this, as outlined here and here.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's recent call for "an increase in both tax rates and revenue" is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here) or Reason (here).

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest column is about regulating Google. He writes, "the most powerful constraint against one firm's market dominance is a new player's entry into the market; this player may not even be in existence when the danger of monopoly is thought to be at its height."

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The author and television news reporter Bernard Goldberg is out with a new column headlined "Obama and the Dolts Deserve Each Other" referring to "your typical not-too-bright American," "the typical American who's barely paying attention," and "Bozo America" with their "empty heads" and "thick skulls."

Some of this I take to be attempted humor, but it's a vein that Republican-leaning spokesmen will want to be wary of. I heard quite a bit of it last week at a conference in Manhattan convened by The New Criterion.

Kevin Williamson, an editor at National Review, spoke at the conference of "the American Voter who is kind of a clown and kind of a buffoon."

Andrew Roberts, the eminent historian — a genius, really — gave the keynote address at the conference and spoke of "one moron, sorry, one man, one vote" and declared "on the tombstone of American greatness will be written the words, 'it was the will of the people.'"

The New York Times has an article making the important and under-noticed point that a lot of money in the stock market is tax-exempt:

a dwindling number of investors are subject to the taxes on investment gains that are set to rise at the end of the year, with most stocks held in accounts that are exempt from taxes.

For example, only 14.7 percent of American households have mutual funds in taxable accounts, down from as high as 23.9 percent in 2001, according to data from the Investment Company Institute....

While data on the tax status of all stockholders is hard to come by, many economists agree than an increasing proportion of the entire equities market is now held by retirement investors whose holdings are not subject to current tax law; by foreign investors who don't pay American taxes, or by institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds that are exempt from taxes.

USA Today reports: "Stocks have flatlined since President Obama was re-elected, in part, due to taxes. Investors don't like tax hikes, and there's a distinct possibility they're coming."

Michael Barone has a column about the growth in the number of Americans receiving federal disability benefits:

In 1960, some 455,000 workers were receiving disability payments. In 2011, the number was 8,600,000. In 1960, the percentage of the economically active 18-to-64-year-old population receiving disability benefits was 0.65 percent. In 2010, it was 5.6 percent....many people are gaming or defrauding the system. This includes not only disability recipients but health care professionals, lawyers and others who run ads promising to get you disability benefits.

It's really something when the New York Times's own famous First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, has to write the Times a letter to the editor explaining that the Times editorial writers don't understand First Amendment principles of free speech as they apply in the Citizens United case regarding campaign finance. As Mr. Abrams writes:

The law at issue in Citizens United permitted The Times to endorse candidates while making it a felony for nonmedia corporations to do so. It made it a crime for a union to distribute your endorsement of President Obama for re-election to its members. It should come as no surprise that the same First Amendment that was held to shield the press in landmark cases of the past now shields such speech as well.

Link via Overlawyered.com.

Forbes has two articles responding to Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes.

Daniel Shuchman gives well documented example after well documented example of tax considerations factoring into Mr. Buffett's business moves as Mr. Buffett himself described them at the time. Mr. Shuchman also observes, "Buffett's sanctimonious tone is inversely proportional to his willingness to propose any reform that would materially impact his own financial position."

Jerry Bowyer reminds us that before Mr. Buffett became a tax-increaser he flirted with the nuclear freeze and population control movements, and suggests that the left-wing politics was Mr. Buffett's way of rebelling against his parents.

David Brooks has a column in the New York Times arguing for the imposition of a consumption tax in part on the basis that:

Unlike in 1986, the baby boomers are now in full retirement mode. The aging population means more government spending, even if we get entitlement programs moderately under control. It also means slower growth. The United States grew at about 3.2 percent a year for the five decades after World War II. It is projected to grow at only 2.2 percent over the next few decades.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the post-election period is the way that corporate executives, many of them in highly regulated industries or ones that depend on government subsidies and contracts, are rushing to embrace President Obama's call for higher tax rates. Via Politico Playbook comes a link to a Reuters article reporting on a meeting between President Obama and "AT&T Inc CEO Randall Stephenson, Archer Daniels Midland Co chief Patricia Woertz, Coca-Cola Co chief Muhtar Kent, Caterpillar Inc's Doug Oberhelman, Pfizer Inc's Ian Read," and Marriott Chief Executive Arne Sorenson, Deloitte LLP Chief Executive Joe Echevarria, and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein.

After the meeting, Mr. Blankfein told CNN, "I think it's better to have as low a marginal rate as possible because the incentive is the marginal rate, but if we had to lift up the marginal rate I would do that."

Via The Grumpy Economist, John Cochrane of the University of Chicago, comes this from the Telegraph newspaper in London:

Almost two-thirds of the country's million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p (percent) top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.

In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.

This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election....

It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.