Cato Podcast

The top 10% pays 60% of all federal taxes, the bottom 20% pays effectively nothing, and last year's tax cuts added new complexity. Cato's Chris Edwards and Adam Michel unpack the numbers and make the case for real reform. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary this week to campaign for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, hailing him as a defender of Western civilization. Cato's Ryan Bourne sits down with Johan Norberg to discuss Orbán’s actual record in government: weakened checks and balances, crony capitalism, and social policies that have fallen short of Orbán’s ambitions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump's executive order challenges 150 years of birthright citizenship law, hinging on four words in the 14th Amendment. The Cato Institute's Tommy Berry, Dan Greenberg, and David Bier unpack the constitutional stakes and what the justices signaled at oral arguments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Davies’s new book, The Great Realignment, argues that the key political divide of the past century — markets versus state control — is being displaced by a new aligning issue: nationalism, sovereignty, and collective identity versus cosmopolitanism and globalism. Cato’s Ryan Bourne talks with Davies about why today’s biggest political fights seem less about tax and spending and more about borders, culture, and who governs, how these non-economic conflicts still have deep economic roots, and what this new alignment persisting would mean for libertarians and economic policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TSA agents are staying home; airport lines are hours long, and Congress still cannot agree on a DHS funding bill. The Cato Institute's Pat Eddington and Chris Edwards say this is a consequence of tying aviation security to the federal budget; a mistake other high-income countries do not make. With high failure rates in covert screening tests and a long trail of civil liberties abuses including secret watchlist criteria and a mass domestic passenger surveillance program, the case for privatizing airport security is stronger than ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.