During the big-spending Bush years, economic and fiscal people inside the Administration often would sympathize with my complaints about bad policy, but say that there was nothing they could do since all the big decisions were being made by the political types in the…
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.
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Barack Obama (Surprisingly) Is Not the Biggest Spender of All
I got involved in a bit of a controversy last year about presidential profligacy. Some guy named Rex Nutting put together some data on government spending and claimed that Barack Obama was the most frugal President in recent history. I pointed out that Mr. Nutting’s…
Another Failed Gun Control Experiment
It sounds strange, but my two favorite columns on gun control were authored by self-identified leftists. But they didn’t let ideology trump common sense. Justin Cronin, for instance, explained that restrictions on gun ownership undermined his ability to protect his…
Even European Commission Bureaucrats Realize that Taxes Can Be Too High!
I’m not a big fan of the European Commission. For those not familiar with this entity, it’s sort of the European version of the executive-branch bureaucracy we have in Washington. And like their counterparts in Washington, the Brussels-based bureaucracy enjoys a very…
Obamacare: A Get-Rich-Quick Scheme for Washington Insiders
Want to know why – as shown by this map – most of America’s richest counties are part of the metropolitan DC region? Part of the answer is that federal bureaucrats are overpaid. Another part of the answer is that the Washington area is filled with consultants and…
The Pervasive Evil of Communism…and the Moral Bankruptcy of Communist Apologists
I spoke earlier today at the 2013 Liberty Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. But I don’t think anybody is going to remember my speech about the collapse of the welfare state, even though I presented lots of powerful data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF, and also shared…
Why Tax Migration and Federalism Mean Doom for Left-Wing States such as New York, California, and Illinois
Maybe this means I’m not a nice person (notwithstanding my high score for tenderness in a recent test), but I can’t help but be happy when I read bad news about fiscal policy in high-tax welfare states. And because I’m a huge fan of tax competition, I get even happier…
A “Moderate” Dan Mitchell with “Few Strong Opinions” for a Kinder, Gentler Era of “Tenderness”
Early this year, I took a libertarian purity test put together by Professor Bryan Caplan at George Mason University. The good news is that I got a 94. Sounds like a solid A, right? Well, the bad news is that the test wasn’t on a 0-100 scale. The maximum grade was 160,…
Obamanomics, as Captured by Cartoonists
I’m a big fan of that form of satire. And if I’m looking at cartoons specifically about statist economic policy, my favorites include Chuck Asay’s dead pig cartoon, as well as his cartoon about the big bad wolf. And this Michael Ramirez headwinds cartoon is one of the…
Least. Surprising. Headline. Ever.
As illustrated by this chart, economists are lousy forecasters. To be more specific, economists are no better than fortune tellers when trying to make short-run macroeconomic forecasts. Heck, if we actually knew what was going to happen over the next 12 months, we’d…