I actually think this it is unfair to highlight Fidel Castro’s endorsement of Obamacare, but I’m in a grumpy mood because I’ve started a diet, so I’ll simply twist the knife a bit by noting that we probably could improve American healthcare by imposing Cuban-style rationing. I imagine many of our obesity-related health problems would disappear […]

I don’t seem to be as depressed as everyone else about Obamacare, in part because our system is already so distorted and controlled by government that (this is my rough guess, to be sure) all we did was move from a system that is 68 percent run by government to a system that is 79 percent […]

Greece is in trouble for a combination of reasons. Government spending is far too excessive, diverting resources from more efficient uses. The bureaucracy is too large and paid too much, resulting in a misallocation of labor. And tax rates are too high, further hindering the productive sector of the economy. Europe’s political class wants to […]

I thought it was an outrage when it was reported that the unfunded liability for state government pension plans was about $500 billion, or perhaps even $1 trillion. I’m not even sure what to say about this item. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute estimates that the shortfall […]

Or maybe this belongs in the “great moments in international bureaucracy” series since it relates to European Union law. Regardless, we have another sign of Europe’s fiscal nightmare. A court in the United Kingdom has given a big green light to welfare tourism by ruling that a foreign citizen can get handouts based on children […]

I realize that the “Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats” series is rather depressing, with only two tiny pieces of good news out of 18 installments, so I’m almost reluctant to unveil a new series. But odious and corrupt deal-making is a fundamental – and probably unavoidable – feature of government, and we need to shine a spotlight […]

Ireland may be in a recession (caused in large part by misguided housing subsidies), but there are two things worth admiring about the Emerald Isle’s public policy. Many wonks already know about the first policy, the 12.5 percent corporate tax rate that helped transform Ireland from the “sick man of Europe.” But it seems that Irish […]

Since we’re already depressed by the enactment of Obamacare, we may as well wallow in misery by looking at some long-term budget numbers. The chart below, which is based on the Congressional Budget Office’s long-run estimates, shows that federal government spending will climb to 45 percent of GDP if we believe CBO’s more optimistic “baseline” estimate. […]

This topic seems very pedestrian since we just took another in a long series of steps in the wrong direction on health care, but the bloated civil service is a major reason why we are heading toward a Greece-style fiscal meltdown. This story from California is shocking. More than 30,000 teachers, including about 1,000 that […]