by Dan Mitchell | May 26, 2026 | Blogs, Taxation
Given California’s well-deserved reputation for tax-and-spend policies, you won’t be surprised to learn that state government spending over the past decade has grown much faster than population plus inflation. And that’s true whether looking...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 24, 2026 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Last October, I shared a table showing how various states have risen or declined as measured by the Tax Foundation’s State Tax Competitiveness Index. Washington easily stands out as the state that has gone downhill by the greatest amount, and you read...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 7, 2026 | Blogs, States, Taxation
In 2015, in a column about the potential enactment of an income tax in the state of Washington, I explained that legislators should learn from Connecticut. The Nutmeg State enacted an income tax in 1991 and the net result has been higher...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 1, 2026 | Blogs, Taxation
Class-warfare tax policy is always a bad idea. Economists generally don’t like class-warfare policies because it is foolish to impose high marginal tax rates on productive behaviors such as investment and entrepreneurship. Politicians should not like...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 19, 2026 | Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I wrote last June that Zohran Mamdani’s platform for New York City was akin to a suicide note. Today, let’s see how the “Caviar Communist” wants to deal with fiscal policy. But let’s first look at two graphs so we can understand New York City’s finances....
