by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Socialism
In a column for the New York Times, Jochen Bittner writes about how a rising star of Germany’s Social Democrat Party wants the type of socialism that made the former East Germany an economic failure. Socialism, the idea that workers’ needs are best met by the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 2, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Since I think comparative economics can be very enlightening, I’m quite pleased to see a new study by David Burton of the Heritage Foundation, which uses several metrics to assess the relative merits of socialism and free enterprise. This is not necessarily an easy...
by Dan Mitchell | May 1, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
I have a very low opinion of leftist politicians, in large part because I suspect most of them privately understand their policies don’t work, but they don’t care because their main goal is the accumulation of political power (Crazy Bernie is an exception since he...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 30, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Financial Privacy, Regulations
I’m not a big fan of so-called anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. They are pointless. They are expensive. They are intrusive. They are discriminatory. They are ineffective. They disproportionately hurt poor people. And things are getting worse because these...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 29, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
My friends on the left hold two impossible-to-reconcile views about taxation. First, they say taxes don’t really have any effect on incentives to work, save and invest, and that governments can impose high tax rates and punitive double taxation without...
