Author Archives : Dan Mitchell
Atlas Shrugs in Detroit
About two weeks ago, while making an important point about the Laffer Curve, here’s what I wrote about the fiscal disaster in Detroit. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece. And the problems of California. And the problems of Cyprus. And the problems of […]
read more...Which State Has the Most Self-Reliant People?
Back in 2010, I put together a “Moocher Index” as a rough measure of which states had the highest levels of welfare dependency after adjusting for poverty rates. My goal was to answer this question. Is there a greater willingness to sign up for income redistribution programs, all other things being equal, from one state […]
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Wall Street Journal Condemns OECD Proposal to Increase Business Fiscal Burdens with Global Tax Cartel
What’s the biggest fiscal problem facing the developed world? To an objective observer, the answer is a rising burden of government spending, caused by poorly designed entitlement programs, growing levels of dependency, and unfavorable demographics. The combination of these factors helps to explain why almost all industrialized nations – as confirmed by BIS, OECD, and […]
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What’s the Bigger Threat to Workers, Unscrupulous Employers or Greedy Politicians?
Remember when you got your first paycheck, presumably when you were a teenager? If you’re like most people, you worked a bunch of hours and calculated how much money you expected to receive, only to then be disappointed when the check you received was for a much smaller amount. That was your rude welcome to […]
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Are Higher Taxes Solving Fiscal Problems, either in Washington or California?
The budget deficit this year is projected to be significantly smaller than it has been in recent years and some of our statist friends claim that this shows the desirability and effectiveness of higher taxes. I’m not persuaded, mostly because our big long-run fiscal challenge is a rising burden of government spending. And the fact […]
read more...Should We Be Optimistic or Pessimistic about the Future of the Second Amendment?
Fifty years from now (assuming we haven’t suffered a Greek-style fiscal collapse), will we still enjoy our constitutional freedom of private gun ownership? Sometimes I’m pessimistic about what will happen because politically correct educators are brainwashing our kids. We’ve even gotten to the point where a deaf kid can’t use sign language if his fingers […]
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Crime Fighting or Corporate Welfare?
I want government to successfully and rationally fight crime and stop terrorism. That’s a perfectly appropriate libertarian sentiment since protecting life, liberty, and property are among the few legitimate roles for government. But I don’t want to give bureaucrats carte blanche to monitor our lives and I don’t want to waste money in those cases […]
read more...Are Republicans the “Stupid Party” or the “Big-Government Party”…or Both?
I sometimes make fun of Republicans for being the “Stupid Party,” but I get genuinely agitated when they’re the “Statist Party.” You can forgive someone for not being intelligent, after all, but it’s much harder to look the other way when they deliberately and knowingly do the wrong thing. And that seems to be a […]
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Two Cheers to the Obama Administration for Resisting French Anti-Tax Competition Scheme
I damned Obama with faint praise last year by asserting that he would never be able to make America as statist as France. My main point was to explain that the French people, notwithstanding their many positive attributes, seem hopelessly statist. At least that’s how they vote, even though they supposedly support spending cuts according […]
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