I wrote the other day that Americans, regardless of all the bad policy we get from Washington, should be thankful we’re not stuck in a hellhole like Venezuela. But we also should be happy we’re not Europeans. This is a point I’ve made before, usually accompanied by data showing that Americans have significantly higher living standards than their cousins on the other […]
read more...Why are some nations rich and other nations poor? What has enabled some nations to escape poverty while others continue to languish? And if we want to help poor nations prosper, what’s the right recipe? Since I’m a public finance economist, I’m tempted to say a flat tax and small government are an elixir for prosperity, but those policies […]
read more...Last August, I shared a list of companies that “re-domiciled” in other nations so they could escape America’s punitive “worldwide” tax system. This past April, I augmented that list with some commentary about whether Walgreen’s might become a Swiss-based company. And in May, I pontificated about Pfizer’s effort to re-domicile in the United Kingdom. Well, to paraphrase what Ronald Reagan said to Jimmy Carter […]
read more...I’ve written a couple of serious posts about the death panels at the VA’s government-run health facilities. I think it’s particularly important to understand that the problem has nothing to do with funding levels. Instead, it’s about the chronic inefficiency of government. But sometimes mockery is more effective than analysis, and this Remy video, produced by Reason […]
read more...Some statements are so lame that they now serve only as punch lines. Nobody, after all, would ever claim to a teacher that “the dog ate my homework.” Moreover, surely few if any people ever actually assert to bill collectors that “the check is in the mail.” And I have to imagine that no guy […]
read more...Imagine how weird it would be if the Cato Institute and Americans for Tax Reform praised Barack Obama for fiscal responsibility. And think how inconceivable it would be for the Heritage Foundation and the National Taxpayers Union to applaud Tim “Turbotax” Geithner for economic stewardship. But the Canadian version of that happened while I was […]
read more...As part of my “great moments” in government series, I periodically share stories about really foolish regulations and really wasteful spending. And sometimes I’ll even have a story that combines dumb regulation and boondoggle spending. For instance, you won’t believe the government’s inane approach to different-sized condoms. I also have a satirical series about “great moments in human rights” and […]
read more...When the new Tory-led government came to power in the United Kingdom, I was rather unimpressed. David Cameron positioned himself as a British version of George W. Bush, full of “compassionate conservative” ideas to expand the burden of government. But even worse than Bush, because Cameron also jacked up taxes when he first took office, including big […]
read more...Regular readers know that good fiscal policy takes place when government spending grows slower than the private economy. Nations that maintain this Golden Rule for extended periods of time shrink the relative burden of government spending, thus enabling more growth by freeing up resources for the productive sector of the economy and creating leeway for lower tax rates. […]
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