by Dan Mitchell | Jul 3, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Socialism
By offering all sorts of freebies to various constituencies, Bernie Sanders has positioned himself as the true-believing socialist in the Democratic race (even though he’s actually a member of the “top-1 percent”). But he has plenty of competition. Kamala...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 2, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
It’s not easy picking the most pessimistic chart about Japan. The country suffered several decades of economic stagnation following the collapse of a bubble about three decades ago. That means it’s a bit of a challenge to identify the worst economic numbers. Is it the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 1, 2019 | Blogs, Capital Gains, Economics, Taxation
One of the worst features of the internal revenue code is the pervasive bias against income that is saved and invested. People who immediately consume their after-tax income are largely untaxed (thankfully, we don’t have a value-added tax), but there are several...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 30, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Regulations
When I assess President Trump’s economic policy, I generally give the highest grade to his tax policy. But as I pointed out in this interview from last year, there’s also been some progress on regulatory policy, even if only in that the avalanche of red tape we were...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 29, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, States, Taxation
Regarding fundamental tax reform, there have been some interesting developments at the state level in recent years. Utah, North Carolina, and Kentucky have all junked their so-called progressive systems and joined the flat tax club. That’s the good news. The bad news...