I’ve already commented on some of the sleazy behavior that infects Chicago politics. Now we have a jaw-dropping example of what’s wrong with the state of Illinois, as explained by Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal. Soon the Illinois state legislature will meet in…
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.
Alan Blinder’s Accidental Case for the Flat Tax
Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an attack on the flat tax – and I was happy after I read his column. Why? Well, because his arguments…
How Government Can Turn Heaven into Hell
One of the sacrifices I make for liberty is traveling to foreign lands. Previous hardship duty includes trips to Monaco, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and Anguilla. I’m currently in Antigua, which is a remarkably beautiful island. But nice places nonetheless…
A Painful Example of Obamacare’s Tax Complexity
As this image illustrates, the internal revenue code is a nightmare of complexity. And this chart shows how Obamacare is turning the health care system into a Byzantine nightmare. So what happens when you mix bad tax policy and bad health care policy? Well, you get…
The Tobin Tax on Financial Transactions Would Be Bad for Investment, Bad for Competitiveness
I’m periodically asked about proposals to impose “small” taxes on transactions. There are a couple of versions of this idea. In some cases, such proposals are designed to tax every economic transaction and supposedly generate enough money to replace all other taxes….
Explaining How to Solve America’s Fiscal Crisis
I didn’t have the fun of dealing with the OccupyWashington protestors at the Americans for Prosperity conference, but I did speak to the audience about America’s looming fiscal nightmare. The video quality isn’t perfect, though it came out better than the recording of…
Per Dollar Spent, OECD Subsidies May Be the Most Destructively Wasteful Part of the Federal Budget
I’m not a fan of international bureaucracies. I’ve criticized the United Nations for wanting global taxes. I’ve condemned the International Monetary Fund for promoting bigger government. I’ve even excoriated the largely unknown Basel Committee on Banking Supervision…
Will the Stupid Party Agree to Higher Taxes and More Wasteful Spending?
I’m baffled by stupid Republicans (sorry to be redundant). Some GOPers have agreed to put taxes on the table. Not surprisingly, Democrats are praising them for this preemptive surrender, patting these Republicans on the head for being good little lapdogs. (The…
Mitt Romney, Mitchell’s Golden Rule, and “Absolutely Essential” Government Spending
I’ve dinged Mitt Romney for his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies, but I haven’t bothered to address his budget plan – in part because it seemed rather underwhelming….
The Deadly Impact of FDA Regulation
I recently commented on some astounding numbers showing that each regulatory bureaucrat destroys 100 jobs in the productive sector of the economy. That’s obviously terrible news. Heck, it would be awful if each bureaucrat caused the destruction of 2 private-sector…