I don’t write or speak about education very much, but, when asked, I explain that America has a very costly and inefficient government school monopoly. The strongest piece of evidence is an amazing chart put together by a Cato colleague. It shows that education spending has skyrocketed while educational performance has stagnated. One of my […]
read more...In a recent interview with the BBC, I basically accused UK Prime Minister David Cameron of being a feckless and clueless demagogue who is engaged in a desperate effort to resuscitate his political future. I shouldn’t have been so kind. Cameron manages to combine bad policy and bad morality in a way that is embarrassing […]
read more...The IRS is worthy of scorn. It is a bloated bureaucracy that routinely violates the rights of taxpayers. But even I didn’t think it was possible for a collection of bureaucrats to display the blithering incompetence necessary to send $46 million of handouts to nearly 24,000 fake returns filed from a single address. Yes, a […]
read more...Why does virtually everything the government does cost more than we’re initially told? In 2009, for instance, I warned that Obamacare would be much more costly than advertised, so I certainly wasn’t surprised several years later when the numbers began to climb. Heck, I narrated an entire video warning that this would happen. There are […]
read more...What do you do if you’re part of a government bureaucracy that has been caught red-handed engaged in sleazy, corrupt, and (almost surely) illegal targeting of Americans for their political beliefs? But before you answer, keep in mind that your bureaucracy also has been exposed for wasting huge amounts of money at lavish conferences. What’s […]
read more...In my never-ending crusade to push for the right kind of austerity, I appeared on RT to pontificate on the merits of limited government. We got to cover a lot of material, so here’s some augmenting material. 1. The right kind of “austerity” is less government spending, which is why I’m very frustrated that the […]
read more...At the European Resource Bank conference earlier this month, Pierre Bessard from Switzerland’s Institut Liberal spoke on a panel investigating “The Link between the Weight of the State and Economic prosperity.” His presentation included two slides that definitely are worth sharing. The first slide, which is based on research from the Boston Consulting Group, looks at […]
read more...I’m not reluctant to criticize my friends at the Heritage Foundation. In some cases, it is good-natured ribbing because of the Cato-Heritage softball rivalry, but there are also real policy disagreements. For instance, even though it is much better than current policy, I don’t like parts of Heritage’s “Saving the American Dream” budget plan. It’s […]
read more...I’ve repeatedly explained that Keynesian economics doesn’t work because any money the government spends must first be diverted from the productive sector of the economy, which means either higher taxes or more red ink. So unless one actually thinks that politicians spend money with high levels of effectiveness and efficiency, this certainly suggests that growth […]
read more...I’ve done a handful of TV debates on Social Security, including the time I said that I wished Republicans had a secret plan for personal retirement accounts. So I thought I was well prepared for this duel with a defender of the status quo on Fox Business Network. I generally think the debate went well, […]
read more...