by Dan Mitchell | Jul 11, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
When I first got to Washington in the mid-1980s, one of the big issues was the supposedly invincible Japanese economy. Folks on the left claimed that Japan was doing well because the government had considerable power to micro-manage the economy with industrial policy....
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 10, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, States, Taxation
There’s an old saying that states are the laboratories of democracy. But since I’m a policy wonk, I focus more on the lessons we can learn from the states about public policy. Such as the importance of limiting the destructive nature of taxes. Such as the economic...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 9, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending
The European Commission’s data-gathering bureaucracy, Eurostat, has just published a new report on government finances for the region. And with Greece’s ongoing fiscal turmoil getting headlines, this Eurostat publication is worthwhile because it debunks the notion,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 8, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Health Care
I’m a long-time advocate of “dynamic scoring,” which means I want the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation to inform policy makers about how fiscal policy changes can impact overall economic performance and therefore generate “feedback” effects....
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 7, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When I make speeches about fiscal policy, I oftentimes share a table showing the many nations that have made big progress by enforcing spending restraint over multi-year periods. I then ask audiences a rhetorical question about a possible list of nations that have...
