by Dan Mitchell | Jun 30, 2018 | Blogs, Economics
During the Obama years, I used data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve to explain that the economic recovery was rather weak. And when people responded by pointing to a reasonably strong stock market, I expressed concern that easy-money policies might be creating an...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 29, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Last week, I shared a graph showing that there are more guns than people in the United States, and I wrote that it was the “most enjoyable” chart of the year, mostly because it gets my leftist friends so agitated. But I’m more likely to share gloomy visuals. The “most...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 28, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
I wrote yesterday about the continuing success of Switzerland’s spending cap. Before voters changed the Swiss constitution, overall expenditures were growing by an average of 4.6 percent annually. Ever since the “debt brake” took effect, though, government spending...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 27, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
There are many threats to prosperity, both in the short run and long run. A tit-for-tat global trade war that would repeat the mistakes of the 1930s. Punitive class-warfare taxes stifling investment and entrepreneurship. Financial bubbles fueled by the easy-money...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 26, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care
I very much suspect Obama partisans and Trump partisans won’t like this column, but the sad reality is that both Obamacare and Trump’s protectionism have a lot in common. In both cases, government is limiting the freedom of buyers and sellers to engage in unfettered...
