Ron Paul has made “End the Fed” a popular slogan, but some people worry that this is a radical untested idea. In part, this is because it is human nature to fear the unknown. But there are plenty of examples of policy reforms that used to be considered radical but are…
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.
Taxpayers get Screwed to Finance a $537,767-Per-Year Bureaucrat
I’ve reported some horror stories about bureaucrats ripping off taxpayers with lavish compensation packages, including: The chief bureaucrat of a low-income California city getting almost $800,000 per year. Cops in Oakland getting average compensation of $188,000. A…
Using Labor Department Data to Indict Obama’s Dismal Performance on Jobs
The new unemployment numbers have been released and the White House must be somewhat happy. The joblessness rate is down to 8.2 percent, which means the number that gets the most publicity continues to move in the right direction. I’ve been predicting that Obama will…
A Grim Reminder of the Pervasive Evil of Communism
Like its evil twin of Nazism, communism is an utterly despicable ideology that explicitly elevates the state over the individual. That’s actually the nicest thing that can be said about this barbaric system. If you want to begin to understand the human cost of…
President Obama Accuses Bill Clinton of “Thinly Veiled Social Darwinism”
Actually, Bill Clinton must be something even worse than a social Darwinist. That’s because the title of this post is wrong. Obama said that Paul Ryan’s plan (which allows spending to grow by an average of 3.1 percent per year over the next decade) is a form of…
A Case Study of How Government Handouts Undermine Human Decency and Social Capital
Why is big government bad for an economy? The easy answer is that big government usually means high tax rates, and this penalizes work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. And perhaps some of the spending is financed by borrowing, and this diverts money from…
Revolt of the Irish Tax Slaves
I wrote last year about a backlash from long-suffering Greek taxpayers. These people – the ones pulling the wagon rather than riding in the wagon – are being raped and pillaged by a political class that is trying to protect the greedy interest groups that benefit from…
With Washington Now Imposing the World’s Highest Corporate Tax Rate, Every Day is April Fool’s Day for American Companies
Last year, I expressed skepticism that the White House was serious about reducing the corporate tax rate. And, sure enough, when the Obama Administration produced a plan earlier this year, it was a disappointing mix of a few good provisions and several unpalatable…
Explaining Pro-Growth Tax Reform to the Senate Budget Committee
What do the flat tax and national sales tax (and even the value-added tax) have in common? As I explain in this Senate Budget Committee testimony, they are all single-rate, consumption-base, loophole-free tax systems that fulfill the key principles of good tax policy….
Should America Copy Europe, as Obama Believes?
Last year, I shared a very amusing Michael Ramirez cartoon showing Obama as the European lemming. Now, Mark Helprin takes a much more serious look at the same issue in the Wall Street Journal, commenting on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of Obama’s interest in the…