by Dan Mitchell | Aug 10, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Compared to most of the world, Japan is a rich country. But it’s important to understand that Japan became rich when the burden of government was very small and there was no welfare state. Indeed, as recently as 1970, Japan’s fiscal policy was rated by Economic...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 9, 2020 | Blogs, Uncategorized
Back in 2018, I shared five images that capture what it means to be libertarian. Let’s do the same thing today, except we’ll first start with a video that is interesting overall, but has some specific insights about libertarians from 5:45-7:20. Now let’s look at our...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 8, 2020 | Blogs, Economics
There are all sorts of regulations, some of which affect the entire economy and some of which target certain sectors. Moreover, regulations vary widely since – depending on the example – they may tell people and business what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 7, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Largely because of my support for jurisdictional competition, I’m a big fan of federalism. Simply stated, our liberties are better protected when there’s decentralization since politicians are less like to over-tax and over-spend when they know potential victims of...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 6, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
We did not get good policy during the economic crisis of the 1930s. Indeed, it’s quite likely that bad decisions by Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt deepened and lengthened the Great Depression. Likewise, George Bush and Barack Obama had the wrong responses...