by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The good thing about being a libertarian (above and beyond respecting the rights and liberties of other people) is that you can always say “I told you so” when government intervention leads to bad results. Obamacare is a very good (albeit very painful) example. The...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 15, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I’ve argued before that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should be the top target of those seeking to shut down useless and counterproductive parts of the federal government. And if President-Elect Trump’s choice for HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, is...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 14, 2016 | Blogs, Free Market, Health Care
Economists are sometimes considered to be a bit odd, and the same thing is sometimes said about libertarians. And since I’m a libertarian economist, I realize that makes me doubly suspect. So when I’ve written about the desirability of market-based organ transplants...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 13, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
In the world of fiscal policy, there are actually two big debates. One debate revolves around the appropriate size of government in the long run. Folks on the left argue that government spending generates a lot of value and that bigger government is a recipe for more...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2016 | Blogs, Economics
Earlier this year, I borrowed from Dante’s Inferno and created the Five Circles of Statist Hell. At the time, I suggested that Venezuela was on the cusp of moving from the third circle (“widespread poverty and economic misery”) to the fourth circle (“systematic and...
