Recycling: The Triumph of Feel-Goodism over Common Sense

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 6, 2015 | Blogs, Economics

Since it’s basically a way of protecting property rights, environmental protection is a legitimate function of government. That’s the easy part. It gets a lot harder when calculating costs and benefits. Everyone surely agrees that a chemical company shouldn’t be able...

Chile’s Private Social Security System Should Be Globally Emulated, not Locally Emasculated

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 5, 2015 | Blogs, Economics

Chile is one of the world’s economic success stories. Reforms in the 1980s and 1990s liberalized the nation’s economy and resulted in rapid increases in economic growth and big reductions in poverty. Unfortunately, the current government is pushing policy in the wrong...

The Texas Grocery Store that Helped Push the Evil Empire on to the Ash Heap of History

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 4, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics

Whenever I need to explain the difference between socialism and capitalism, I start by noting that socialism technically is different from Obama-style big-government redistributionism and cronyism. Socialism involves something more pervasive, involving government...

The Disgusting Corruption of America’s Political Class

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 3, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs

Back in March, I asked why Republican presidential candidates were willing to openly violate federal anti-bribery law by supporting agriculture subsidies in exchange for campaign loot. My question was merely rhetorical, of course, since politician supposedly aren’t...

Looming Republican Surrender on Spending Caps?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 2, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs

What’s worse, Democrats who deliberately seek to make government bigger because of their ideological belief in statism, or Republicans who sort of realize that big government is bad yet make government bigger because of incompetence? I’m not sure, though this is a...