by Dan Mitchell | Sep 20, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
I argued last year that leftists should be nice to rich people because upper-income taxpayers finance the vast majority of the American welfare state according to government data. Needless to say, my comment about being “nice” was somewhat sarcastic. But I was making...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 19, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
Most economic policy debates are predictable. Folks on the left urge higher taxes and bigger government while folks on the right advocate lower taxes and smaller government (thanks to “public choice” incentives, many supposedly pro-market politicians don’t follow...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 18, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
Keynesian economics is like Freddie Krueger, constantly reappearing after logical people assumed it was dead. The fact that various stimulus schemes inevitably fail should be the death knell for the theory, which is basically the “perpetual motion machine” of...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 17, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Back in 2015, I mocked Venezuelan socialism because it led to shortages of just about every product. Including toilet paper. But maybe that doesn’t matter. After all, if people don’t have anything to eat, they probably don’t have much need to visit the bathroom....
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 16, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs
I periodically list people who have suffered horrible abuse because of despicable actions by government. At some point, I’ll have to create a special page to memorialize these victims. Something like the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame or Moocher Hall of Fame, though I...