If misery loves company, then American and English taxpayers can enjoy a bonding experience after reading this story about excessive pay for bureaucrats in Brussels. According to the Daily Telegraph, at least 1,000 (and probably more than 2,000) of these…
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.
Robert Samuelson’s Unintentional Case for Austrian Economics
In his Washington Post column discussing a crisis of confidence among economists, Robert Samuelson correctly notes that Keynesians don’t seem to have the right answers. But he concludes that other schools of thought are similarly befuddled by current…
A Bigger Government Means a Less Prosperous Economy
A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University examines some of the academic research about the relationship between government spending and economic performance. Reinforcing many of the points I made in my theory and evidence videos, the GMU study…
Congressman Barton, BP, Obama, and the Oil Spill
I was interviewed by CNN about the issues relating to Congressman Barton’s apology to BP. The network only used one of my quotes from the interview, and I was happy to see that I was not taken out of context (always a danger when you are taped in advance). To augment…
Canadian Boondoggles and Russia Is More Capitalist than the U.S. (Again)
The G-20 gab-fest is in Canada this weekend, but Canadian taxpayers are definitely not winners. In a display of waste that might even embarrass a French politician, the Canadian government somehow is going to squander $1 billion hosting the event. I can’t even…
Bureaucracy Run Amok
John Derbyshire of National Review has an interesting article on bureaucratic harassment of private business. He begins with a personal story of something that happened when he first came to the United States and was working at a food-preparation company: The first…
The G-20 Fiscal Fight: A Pox on Both Their Houses
Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity”…
Big-Business Lobby Group Supports So-Called Stimulus and Obamacare and then has Gall to Complain about Big Government
Regular readers of this blog know that big corporations often are enemies of free markets and individual liberty. So it is hardly suprising to know that the Business Roundtable, a lobby representing CEOs of major companies, supported the wasteful and ineffective…
European Central Bank President Wants to Exacerbate Continent’s Fiscal Crisis
It’s been amusing, in an I-told-you-so fashion, to follow the fiscal crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states. And I feel like a voyeuristic ghoul as I observe the incredibly misguided bailout policies being adopted by the political elites (who are…
Let’s Celebrate Some Inspiring News on Property Rights
This new video from the Institute for Justice celebrates the backlash against the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision that allowed politicians to seize private property for the benefit of commercial developers and other campaign contributors. The best part of…