by Dan Mitchell | Jun 13, 2020 | Blogs, Economics
If you want to understand how government really works, learn about “public choice.” This is the common-sense theory that politicians and other people in politics often make decisions based on self interest, and it does a very good job of explaining why we get so many...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 12, 2020 | Blogs, Economics
There’s much to dislike about Keynesian economics, most notably that it tells politicians that their vice – buying votes by spending other people’s money – is somehow a virtue. Advocates of Keynesianism also can be very simplistic, sometimes falling victim to the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 11, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs
One week ago, I wrote about how the welfare state creates high implicit marginal tax rates, thus making it difficult for low-income people to climb out of poverty and dependence. But that’s not the only way that poor people are victimized by big government. Another...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 10, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
There are plenty of people on the left who write serious and substantive articles about fiscal policy. For instance, I strongly disagree with many of the policy prescriptions from the IMF and the OECD, but those international bureaucracies are reasonably rigorous with...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 9, 2020 | Blogs, Economics
As part of my recent presentation to IES Europe, here’s what I said (and what I’ve said many times before) about the relationship between economic policy and national prosperity. My remarks focused in part on the difference between absolute economic liberty and...
