I’ve written before about the remarkable vitality of Hong Kong and Singapore, two jurisdictions that deserve praise for small government and free markets. I have also praised Switzerland because of policies such as genuine federalism and financial privacy, and it goes…
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.
How Bureaucrats and Politicians Conspire to Rip Off Taxpayers
I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the…
Where Are the European Spending Cuts?
Paul Krugman recently tried to declare victory for Keynesian economics over so-called austerity, but all he really accomplished was to show that tax-financed government spending is bad for prosperity. More specifically, he presented a decent case against the…
New European Data: When Tax Competition Is Weakened, Politicians Respond by Increasing Tax Rates
I often argue that we need to preserve tax competition and tax havens in order to limit the greed of the political class. Without some sort of external constraint, they will over-tax and over-spend, creating the kind of downward economic spiral already happening in…
Raise Your Glass and Give a Toast to Celebrate the Real-World Benefits of Lower Taxes and Economic Freedom
I share a lot of economic theory and empirical evidence in favor of lower tax rates. And I’m constantly extolling the virtues of overall economic freedom. But sometimes it helps to have a real-world example of how a specific industry responds when it is freed from…
Krugton the Invincible…or Krugman the Inadvertent Opponent of Tax Increases?
President Bush imposed a so-called stimulus plan in 2008 and President Obama imposed an even bigger “stimulus” in 2009. Based upon the economy’s performance over the past five-plus years, those plans didn’t work. Japan has spent the past 20-plus years imposing one…
The Strange Left-Wing Fascination with Prostitution
I thought conservatives were the ones with an unseemly fixation on sex. They’re supposed to be the Puritans who, in the words of Mencken, have a “haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Maybe that’s true in a few cases, but it also appears that some…
Can You Name the One Nation in the World with a Higher Corporate Tax Rate than the United States?
I’ve made the point before that the United States foolishly imposes the highest corporate tax rate of all developed nations. But that obviously means it is theoretically possible for there to be a nation in the developing world that has a higher corporate tax rates….
Laughing at Obama’s Fumbled Attempt to Extort More Taxes with FAA Flight Delays
You don’t enjoy many victories when you fight for liberty, so I’m not averse to spiking the football on those rare occasions when we win. That’s why I shared this very funny cartoon last week to celebrate Obama’s belly flop on gun control. Now we have another cartoon,…
Are there any Lessons to Be Learned from the Rogoff-Reinhart Kerfuffle?
For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a…