by Dan Mitchell | Feb 24, 2020 | Blogs, Crime, Society
Back in 2012, I asked readers to pretend they were criminals and to contemplate whether they would want to rob a house with armed residents. This “IQ test” was designed to help people understand that cost-benefit analysis applies to all types of human...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 23, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
Early last year, I shared a video explaining that trade deficits generally don’t matter. I even suggested trade deficits might be a sign of economic strength because foreigners who earned dollars were anxious to invest them in the American economy. I’m recycling this...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 21, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Because of his extremist views, I often refer to Senator Sanders as “Crazy Bernie.” You can argue I’m being unfair. After all, I pointed out during the last campaign that his voting record in the Senate was almost identical to the voting records of Hillary Clinton and...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 20, 2020 | Blogs, Taxation, VAT
Back in 2012, I warned that the value-added tax (a hidden version of a national sales tax) was enabling bad fiscal policy in Japan, in large part because politicians wouldn’t make much-needed entitlement reforms if they had the option of raising the VAT. Later that...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 17, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care
The main problem with America’s health care system is government intervention (Medicare, Medicaid, the tax code’s healthcare exclusion, etc). The main symptom of all that intervention is pervasive “third-party payer,” which is the term for a system where people buy...
