Most of us are aware that America has a punitive corporate tax system, but here’s a sobering bit of analysis. Corporations pay more money to governments than they do to their shareholders. Here’s a chart from a recent Tax Foundation analysis. Now here’s something even…
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.
If Obama Wants to Create More Jobs, He Should Get Rid of Regulatory Bureaucrats
Last year, I reported on a study from the Small Business Administration that estimated that federal regulation costs the economy a staggering $1.75 trillion every year. But that number is so large that it’s hard to understand what it actually means, so let’s look at…
Germany’s Not a Good Role Model…Except When Compared to the Profligate U.S.
Last week in New York City, during my Intelligence Squared debate about stimulus, I pointed out that Germany is doing better than the United States and explained that they largely avoided any Bush/Obama Keynesian spending binges. One of my opponents disagreed and…
A Food Stamp Horror Story – and Taxpayers Are the Victims
I am automatically suspicious of the veracity of anything I see online, so I don’t necessarily believe this is a real receipt. But it could be, and that’s what’s disturbing. There are very few restrictions on the use of food stamps, so there’s nothing to stop a…
Sequestration Is a Small Step in Right Direction, not Something to Be Feared
I have sometimes wondered whether it is accurate to say that Republicans are the “Stupid Party.” We’ll soon know the answer to that question. As part of the debt limit agreement, the politicians agreed to set up a “Supercommittee” comprised of six Republicans and six…
Humorous Halloween Tax Video
In what will probably become an annual tradition, here is the Halloween tax video I posted last year. The last 30 seconds of the three-minute video actually contain some very good economics, roughly akin to this classic cartoon. Yes, incentives matter. And since it is…
Was FDR Misguided or Malicious?
Here’s an absolutely horrifying video of President Franklin Roosevelt promoting a “Second Bill of Rights” based on coercive redistribution. At first, I was going to post it and contrast it with this superb Reagan video and compare how one President’s policies kept…
Mitchell’s Golden Rule
A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a “Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy” that was probably a bit too wordy. Good fiscal policy exists when the private sector grows faster than the public sector, while fiscal ruin is inevitable if government spending grows faster than the…
CBO’s Witch-Doctor Economics and Gypsy Forecasting
I’ve criticized the Congressional Budget Office for generating biased and inaccurate numbers. These are the clowns, after all, who say deficit spending stimulates the economy in the short run but they also rely on a model which seemingly predicts 100 percent tax rates…
El Salvador, Greece, and American Tax Dollars: The Destructive Impact of the IMF
The Europeans have just agreed to another bailout for Greece. That’s the bad news. The good news is…well, there is no good news. Sarkozy, Merkel, and the other statists have once again failed to do the right thing and instead have decided to throw good money after bad…