by Dan Mitchell | Jul 27, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Way back in January of 2017, I predicted for a French TV audience that Donald Trump would be a big spender like George Bush instead of a small-government conservative like Ronald Reagan. Sadly, I was right. I crunched the numbers earlier this year and showed that...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 26, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
When I write about socialism, I often point out that there’s a difference between how economists define it (government ownership, central planning, and price controls) and how normal people define it (lots of taxes, redistribution, and intervention). These definitions...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 25, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I recently speculated whether Seattle should be considered the worst-governed city in the country. Though there’s lots of competition for that honor from places like San Francisco, Detroit, New York City, and Chicago. And John Stossel makes a compelling case for...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 24, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Supply Side, Taxation
I participated in a debate yesterday on “tax havens” for the BBC World Service. If you read last month’s two-part series on the topic (here and here), you already know I’m a big defender of low-tax jurisdictions. But it’s always interesting to interact with people...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 23, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There are many reasons to be depressed about Italy. Bad policy is part of the problem, of course, but this chart shows that the country also is facing a demographic crisis. The blue lines show that there are now more deaths than births. The chart comes from...
