I hope the title to this blog post is completely wrong, but the news out of Europe is very grim. Politicians have been over-spending and going deeper and deeper into debt. This negatively affects the private sector in the usual ways (higher taxes, unproductive…
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.
Primer Makes the Case for Tax Competition to Restrain Government Oppression
The Freeman has an article by an expert from Bermuda about the importance of giving taxpayers an escape option to curtail the greed of the political elite: The Declaration of Independence had it exactly right: “He [King George III] has erected a multitude of New…
Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXX
It is probably safe to assume that government bureaucrats are overpaid in every city and state, but it won’t come as a big surprise to learn that San Francisco is especially profligate. Here are some disturbing details compiled by Investor’s Business…
Guilt-Ridden German Millionaires Endorse More Class-Warfare Taxation
CNBC is reporting that 51 German millionaires and billionaires have endorsed the idea of that rich people should have to give an extra 10 percent of their income to the government. I’m tempted to dismiss this story since (according to my rudimentary math skills)…
America Will Now Be the Unquestioned World Leader…But in the Wrong Way.
The United States has a very anti-competitive corporate tax regime. The federal tax rates is 35 percent and the average of state corporate tax systems brings the rate to nearly 40 percent. In Europe, by contrast, the average corporate tax rate is about 25 percent….
When Billionaires Attack!
Here’s a cheerful story I saw linked on Drudge, which shows that sometimes rich people are not guilt-ridden statists and instead stand shoulder to shoulder with ordinary people to fight bad government policy. In Australia, the leftist government wants to impose…
Hillary Clinton’s Poisonous Advice for Latin America
In an amusing coincidence, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and I were both in Latin America this week offering fiscal policy advice. But it won’t surprise you to know that Mrs. Clinton’s suggestions are radically different than the advice I provided….
Great Moments in Government Waste and Stupidity
Here’s a depressing story from the Columbus Dispatch that shows the government’s ability to be incompetent and wasteful at the same time. A labor dispute that never should have existed (but did, thanks to the incestuous relationship of unions and…
Pontificating about the Stupidity of Big-Government Stimulus
Obama and the Democrats are trying to enact a third so-called stimulus (a.k.a., jobs bill). I’d make a joke about three strikes and your out, but we should remember that this is actually the fourth attempt since we should count Bush’s lame faux stimulus in…
Another Reason Why Welfare Is Economically Destructive
I’m normally not a big fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development since it is an international bureaucracy that persecutes low-tax jurisdictions. But the economists at the OECD sometimes do good work (the same can be said of the…