Back in 2010, I shared parts of a Dave Barry column that mocked the government for bizarre examples of stupid law enforcement. Barry was specifically making fun of OSHA bureaucrats for fining a company for the horrible transgression of saving a worker when a trench collapsed. But there are many other examples of law enforcement […]
read more...One of my favorite political cartoons is this Michael Ramirez gem showing President Obama following the European lemmings over the cliff of statism. But this isn’t a laughing matter. As shown in this remarkable graph on global living standards, Americans enjoy significantly more consumption than their European counterparts. And here’s another set of charts showing […]
read more...When I first read this story in the Washington Post about supposedly under-appreciated federal bureaucrats, I was tempted to focus on the sentence referring to “the sledgehammer of budget cuts scheduled to hit today.” Is the Washington Post so biased and/or clueless that reporters really think that a 1.2 percent reduction in overall spending for […]
read more...The number one goal for fiscal policy is to reduce the burden of government spending. The simple way to achieve this goal is to adhere to Mitchell’s Golden Rule and and make sure the private sector grows faster than the public sector. But when politicians fail to exercise that modest amount of fiscal restraint, bad […]
read more...Sigh. I feel like a modern-day Sisyphus. Except I’m not pushing a rock up a hill, only to then watch it roll back down. I have a far more frustrating job. I have to read the same nonsense day after day about “deep spending cuts” even though I keep explaining to journalists that a sequester […]
read more...I shared a couple of amusing sequester cartoons the other day, and I’ve previously written about the absurdity of anti-sequester hysteria in Washington when all it means is that the federal budget will grow by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion. This Nate Beeler cartoon effectively captures the mindset of […]
read more...Notwithstanding hysterical rhetoric from the White House, the bureaucracies, and the various pro-spending lobbies in Washington, the sequester does not mean “vicious” or “draconian” spending cuts. I wish that was the case. All it does is restrain spending so that it grows by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion. We […]
read more...I did a video several years ago on the link between big government and big corruption, and I periodically revisit the issue by citing disgusting examples of sleaze and cronyism ranging from the Export-Import Bank to the racial spoils scam in Alaska. The folks at Learn Liberty also have a great video on this topic, […]
read more...As an economist with a boring personality (sorry to be redundant), I sometimes focus on numbers. And when contemplating the cost of regulation and red tape, there are some numbers that should frighten all of us. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 […]
read more...The value-added tax is a pernicious levy. It’s basically a hidden form of national sales tax, imposed every time a transaction occurs at any stage of the production process. But what irks me about the VAT is not its design (indeed, it shares some key characteristics with the flat tax). What gets me agitated about […]
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