Okay, the title of this post is an absurd exaggeration, but I am not optimistic about the future of the United Kingdom. Government spending has exploded over the last ten-plus years (the largest expansion in the burden of government spending among developed nations), and this unsurprisingly has led to punitive class-warfare policies. I saved this […]

Only in the artificial bubble of Washington do you find people who are willing to make preposterous statements such as those contained in this David Ignatius column. He writes that we should adopt a value-added tax to avoid a Greek-style fiscal crisis, appararently oblivious to the fact that Greece adopted a VAT and still had […]

It is now fully apparent that General Motors did not pay back any money to taxpayers, and certainly did not pay back the full amount, as stated in the reprehensibly dishonest ads produced by the company. The Obama Administration took part in the lie, which exposes an additional reason why it was a terrible idea […]

I realize that public opinion polls are quirky and that answers often depend on how questions are phrased. Nonetheless, these results seem very strong.  As reported on the Bankrupting America website, there is more than three-to-one opposition against a value-added tax:  Voters think a value added tax, or VAT, is a bad idea for America. […]

The blogging about Greece is too depressing, so let’s kick a couple of government bureaucracies for bone-headed stupidity. This excerpt is from a Pajamas Media story about how the Customs bureaucrats mistakenly confused BB guns for machine guns, and then turned the toys over to the BATF bureaucrats, who are now stonewalling and refusing to return […]

Here are some very depressing stories. The Daily Mail reports that a European Court has ruled that the U.K. no longer can impose restrictions on welfare payments to women married to suspected terrorists: A European court has instructed Britain to drop restrictions which limit social security benefits paid to the wives of terror suspects. Ministers […]

Here’s a bit of good news to end the weekend. Arizona politicians have been forced to suspend a statewide speed camera program. I’m especially pleased to see that civil disobedience played a role in forcing politicians to pull the plug on the Orwellian system:  Arizona is ending a groundbreaking and contentious program that put speed cameras […]

As expected, the European Union and International Monetary Fund have chosen to subsidize the profligacy of Greek politicians. A deal has just been announced. As the Washington Post reports:  Greece on Sunday announced a long-awaited deal with the European Union and International Monetary Fund for a $145 billion financial rescue, an unprecedented package… The three-year […]

Total government debt is about 115 percent of GDP in Greece, which clearly is one of the factors that spooked investors and led to the bailout. But Japan – at least on paper – is in much worse shape with government debt approaching 200 percent of GDP. And with a grim demographic outlook (lots of […]