Author Archives : Dan Mitchell
Grilled about Cayman Investments, Jack Lew Chooses the I’m-a-Moron Defense
Every so often, you get a “teaching moment” in Washington, and we now have an excellent opportunity to educate lawmakers about the “offshore” world because President Obama’s nominee to be Treasury Secretary has been caught with his hand in the tax haven cookie jar. Mr. Lew not only invested some of his own money in […]
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The Great TCI Anti-VAT Mutiny of 2013
The value-added tax is a pernicious levy. It’s basically a hidden form of national sales tax, imposed every time a transaction occurs at any stage of the production process. But what irks me about the VAT is not its design (indeed, it shares some key characteristics with the flat tax). What gets me agitated about […]
read more...Another Hypocritical Leftist Caught with His Hand in the Tax-Haven Cookie Jar
I’m a huge fan of so-called tax havens. I’ve been working for more than 10 years to protect and promote the values of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy. The bureaucrats at the OECD even threatened to have me tossed in a Mexican jail because I was advising representatives of low-tax jurisdictions on how […]
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The Sequester Should Be Embraced, Not Feared
The looters and moochers in Washington are increasingly agitated by the prospect of sequestration. Automatic budget cuts, we are told, will indiscriminately slash vital programs and undermine economic growth by reducing government spending. This is utter bunk. I would like to “slash vital programs,” but the chart I prepared earlier this week shows that the […]
read more...George Orwell Surely Would Be Amused by the Statolatry in the United Kingdom
In previous posts, I’ve expressed pessimism about the future of the United Kingdom, largely because all political parties have a statist mentality. I criticized Gordon Brown, the former Labor Party Prime Minister, for being a compulsive redistributionist, big spender, and taxaholic. But nothing’s really changed under Tory leadership. David Cameron is a vacuous statist, undermining […]
read more...After Reviewing the Federal Reserve’s Lousy Track Record, Thomas Sowell Asks Why such a Deeply Flawed Institution Should Be Allowed to Accumulate more Power
When speaking about the difference between the private sector and the government, I sometimes emphasize that mistakes and errors are inevitable, and that the propensity to screw up may be just as prevalent in the private sector as it is in the public sector. I actually think the government is more likely to screw up, for […]
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A Real-Life Example of How Government Handouts Create Life-Sapping Dependency
Remember Julia, the mythical moocher created by the Obama campaign to show the joys of government dependency? As illustrated by this Ramirez cartoon, Julia symbolizes the entitlement mentality. Unfortunately, there are many real-life Julias. I wrote a couple of years ago about Olga, a Greek woman who petulantly believed that government was responsible for her […]
read more...Exposing the Absurdity of Washington’s Anti-Sequester Hysteria
To save America from the supposedly “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts caused by sequestration, President Obama has instead asked Congress to approve an alternative fiscal package containing additional tax increases. So why is the sequester so bad? Does it slash the budget by 50 percent? Does it shut down departments, programs, and agencies? Sounds good […]
read more...Is Anybody Surprised that the First Bottle of Tax Booze Didn’t Cure the Spendaholics?
Those of you old enough to remember the Cold War may remember something called the Brezhnev Doctrine. This was the rule concocted by the Soviet tyrants that basically said a nation could never regain freedom once it fell under communist rule. In my simple way of looking at such matters, this rule translated into: “What’s […]
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