Did you sing Happy Birthday? The nation just “celebrated” the fifth anniversary of the signing of the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly referred to as the “stimulus.” This experiment in Keynesian economics was controversial when it was…
Daily Analysis
Big Government and Tipping Points: Is America Is Doomed to Become a Failed European-Style Welfare State?
When I give speeches around the country, I often get asked whether it’s time to give up. More specifically, has America reached a tipping point, with too many people riding in the wagon of government dependency and too few people creating wealth and pulling the wagon…
The Wages of Cronyism, Big Government, and Corruption
The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” but the same can’t be said of Washington, DC. The bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, insiders, cronyists, and influence peddlers have rigged the system so that they get rich by diverting money from people…
A Single Picture to Show that Many Nations Are Economically Doomed
Over the years, I’ve shared many charts, graphs, and tables to help people understand that the welfare state is fundamentally unsustainable. And, assuming there’s not genuine entitlement reform, many of these fiscal estimates show that the United States has a very…
New CBO Numbers Show a Remarkably Simple Path to a Balanced Budget
A just-released report from the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office is getting lots of attention because the bureaucrats are now admitting that Obamacare will impose much more damage to the economy than they previously predicted. Of course, many people…
Yet another Example of the Failure of Keynesian Economics
Early last year, with the sequester about to begin, President Obama stated that “these cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls.” He made this statement…
We Need a Debate about the Size of Government, but It Helps to Understand Basic Fiscal Facts
Self awareness is supposed to be a good thing, so I’m going to openly acknowledge that I have an unusual fixation on the size of government. I don’t lose a wink of sleep thinking about deficits, but I toss and turn all night fretting about the overall burden of…
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nation Has Increased Welfare Spending the Fastest of All?
There’s an old joke about two guys camping in the woods, when suddenly they see a hungry bear charging over a hill in their direction. One of the guys starts lacing up his sneakers and his friend says, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear.” The other guys…
Great Moments in Wasteful Spending…or Great Moments in Bizarre Regulation?
Every so often, I share stories about the ridiculous and outrageous way in which the federal government squanders our money. So when I saw this New York Post story about the feds pissing away a six-figure sum on condom research, I figured this would be a perfect…
Washington’s Over-Compensated Shadow Bureaucracy and the Real Income-Inequality Problem
One of my most widely read – but also most depressing – articles was from about two years ago and it exposed the fact that Washington, DC, is now the nation’s richest region. I explained that Washington is rich because of unearned wealth. Almost all of the loot that…

