If you had to pick the most inane, pointless, and intrusive example of government stupidity, what would you pick? We have lots of examples of regulators running amok. Regulations making it difficult for trucking firms to weed out drunk drivers. Year-long sting…
Dan Mitchell
Daniel J. Mitchell is the President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation. Dr. Mitchell advocates limited government and fundamental tax reform, and is the nation’s leading opponent of tax harmonization schemes developed by the Brussels-based European Union, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations.
In addition to fiscal policy, Dr. Mitchell is a trenchant observer of economic developments and an expert on Social Security reform – particularly the fiscal policy impact of reform and what the US can learn from other nations that have created personal retirement accounts.
Some Good News on Tax Reform (If You Prefer the Flat Tax over the National Sales Tax)
I’m ecumenical on tax reform. I’ll support any plan that rips up the internal revenue code and instead lowers tax rates, reduces double taxation, and cuts out distorting loopholes. And as I explain in this interview, both the flat tax and national sales tax have a low…
More Obamacare Failure
If Obamacare is a success, as the White House and establishment media would like us to believe, then why is the Obama Administration so anxious to hide the numbers? After all, surely we haven’t set the bar so low that the Administration can claim victory simply…
Will Taxpayers Be Forced to Bail Out Union Pensions?
As a supporter of genuine capitalism, which means the right of contract and the absence of coercion, I don’t think there should be any policies that help or hinder unions. The government should simply be a neutral referee that enforces contracts and upholds the rule…
Tax Day Fantasies
I realize this may be a thought crime by DC standards, but it sure would be nice to eliminate the high tax rates that undermine economic growth and reduce American competitiveness. At the risk of sharing too much information, I fantasize about a world without…
Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth from Washington?
Last year, I conducted an informal poll at a conference in Paris. I explained to the audience that the public sector consumed about 57 percent of the French economy and I asked them whether they got more services and better government than the people of Germany (where…
Agreeing with Leftists (Sort of) about the World’s Sixth-Largest “Tax Haven”
To put it mildly, I’m not a fan of the so-called Tax Justice Network. In a moment of typical understatement, I referred to the U.K.-based group as “…a bunch of crazy Euro-socialists.” And to give you an idea of why I don’t like them, here’s some of what I wrote about…
More Obamacare Cartoons
The statists are claiming Obamacare is now a success. Needless to say, I think this is a laughable assertion. Indeed, I shared a very clever graphic from Ted Cruz to help explain why it’s hardly a big achievement to destabilize the insurance market and then coerce…
Why Did Western Nations Continue to Prosper in the 20th Century even though Fiscal Burdens Increased?
In the pre-World War I era, the fiscal burden of government was very modest in North America and Western Europe. Total government spending consumed only about 10 percent of economic output, most nations were free from theplague of the income tax, and the value-added…
The Left’s Pro-Single Payer Health Care Graphic: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription
The new leftist website, Vox, has an article by Sarah Kliff on Vermont’s experiment with a single-payer healthcare system. But I don’t really have much to say about what’s happening in the Green Mountain State, other than to declare that I much prefer healthcare…