Senator Tom Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook is out with a new, grisly collection of boondoggles and pork-barrel spending.
Daily Analysis
Who You Going to Believe on Infrastructure Spending: The IMF in August or the IMF in October?
The International Monetary Fund isn’t my least-favorite international bureaucracy. That special honor belongs to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, largely because of its efforts to undermine tax competition and protect the interests of the…
Excessive Government Spending in Europe: Sowing the Seeds for another Fiscal Crisis
Europe is in deep trouble. That’s an oversimplification, of course, since there are a handful of nations that seem to be moving in the right direction (or at least not moving rapidly in the wrong direction). But notwithstanding those exceptions, Europe in general…
Hong Kong’s Remarkable Fiscal Policy
I’ve had ample reason to praise Hong Kong’s economic policy. Most recently, it was ranked (once again) as the world’s freest economy. And I’ve shown that this makes a difference by comparing Hong Kong’s economic performance to the comparatively lackluster (or weak)…
Obama Is Right about the European Economy…But Doesn’t Grasp the Implications
I’m not a big fan of Obamanomics. I don’t like the President’s class-warfare mentality on taxes. I don’t like his support for Keynesian spending policy. And I don’t like his costly expansions of government such as Obamacare. Indeed, I even like mocking his reflexive…
Nation’s Leader Rejects Keynesian Economics, Acknowledges that Real Jobs Are Created by the Private Sector
You’re probably surprised by the title of this post. You may even be wondering if President Obama had an epiphany on the road to Greece? I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but the leader we’re talking about isn’t the President of the United States. Instead, we’re…
Led by North Carolina and Kansas, a Look at States Moving in the Right Direction
My colleagues Chris Edwards and Nicole Kaeding have just released the biannual Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors from the Cato Institute. The Report Card is on the Cato Institute’s most impressive publications sincedevelopments on the state level help…
The Rahn Curve and the Laffer Curve
What’s the relationship between the Rahn Curve and the Laffer Curve? For the uninitiated, the Rahn Curve is the common-sense notion that some government is helpful for prosperous markets but too much government is harmful to economic performance. Even libertarians,…
Slovenia: A Case Study of Missed Opportunities and Economic Decline
I’m a big believer that real-world examples can teach us about the benefits of good fiscal policy (think Hong Kong, Estonia, Canada, and the U.S. under Reagan and Clinton) and the costs of bad fiscal policy (France, Cyprus, Greece, and the U.S. under Bush and Obama)….
A Two-Question Challenge for Supporters of Intervention and Big Government
I want to challenge supporters of intervention and big government. Here are two simple questions. I’ll be happy if I can get a semi-reasonable answer to either of them. 1. Can you name a nation that became rich with statist policies? Before you say Sweden, or…