by Dan Mitchell | Apr 13, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
What’s the Laffer Curve? It’s the simple, common-sense observation that there’s not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. Folks in the private sector understand this principle. No restaurant owner, for instance, would double meal prices and assume...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 12, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs
When writing about the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international bureaucracy based in Paris, my life would be simpler if I created some sort of automatic fill-in-the-blanks system. Something like this. The OECD, subsidized by $____...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
Free trade is a good moral concept for the simple reason that politicians and bureaucrats should not be allowed to interfere with voluntary transactions between consenting adults. It’s also a good economic concept for the simple reason that protectionists can’t...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 10, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
What are the wisest words ever uttered by an American president? I’m not going to pretend to know the answer, but there are some options that are high on my list. I like what Ronald Reagan said about the government’s view of the economy, a quote that I shared just a...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 9, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Health Care
I’ve often complained that government-created third-party payer is the main problem with America’s healthcare system, and I was making that point well before Obamacare was imposed upon the country. The issue is very straightforward. In a genuine free market,...