I routinely (some would say repetitively) argue that the burden of government spending is a drag on the economy because labor and capital are being misallocated via the political process. My message is that we need to reduce the size of the public sector, even if we…
Daily Analysis
CF&P Joins Coalition Warning Against Reversing Sequester Cuts
Last week the Center for Freedom & Prosperity joined with the National Taxpayers Union and 17 other groups to warn Republican leaders against making the mistake of undoing the sequester cuts. The letter notes: The BCA established limits on discretionary spending…
The European Crisis (and American Future?) of Too Many Over-Compensated Bureaucrats
The only sustainable way of achieving more prosperity and higher living standards is to increase the quality and quantity of labor and capital in the economy. This may sound like boring econo-speak, but labor and capital are the two “factors of production” and our…
Iceland, Switzerland, and the Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy
Being a glass-half-full kind of guy, I look for kernels of good news when examining economic policy around the world. I once even managed to find something to praise about French tax policy. And I can assure you that’s not a very easy task. I particularly try to find…
Keynesian Economics, Government Shutdowns, and Economic Growth
Keynesian economics is the perpetual motion machine of the left. You build a model that assumes government spending is good for the economy and you assume that there are zero costs when the government diverts money from the private sector. With that type of model, you…
If There’s a Grand Bargain, Taxpayers Should Get a Tax Cut rather than a Tax Hike
The Washington metropolitan area has become America’s wealthiest region because trillions of dollars are taken every year from the productive sector of the economy and then divvied up by the politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and interest groups that benefit from…
For any Fiscal Policy Question, Spending Restraint Is the Answer
Okay, I’ll admit the title of this post is an exaggeration. How to fix the mess at the IRS is a fiscal policy question, and that requires tax reform rather than spending restraint. But allow me a bit of literary license. We just had a big debt limit battle in…
The Unrecognized Shutdown Victory
I recently gave five reasons why the shutdown fight was worthwhile and my number one reason was that it’s better to be on offense than defense. It seems I’m not the only one to reach this sensible conclusion. Here’s some of what Fred Barnes wrote today for the Wall…
The French Death Spiral
There’s a tendency in public life to exaggerate the positive or negative implications of any particular policy. This is why I try to be careful not to overstate the potential benefits of reforms I like, such as the flat tax. Yes, we would get better growth and there…
Lung Cancer, Heroin, and Government Spending
If this blog was an episode of Jeopardy, the response to the title of this post would be “Name three things that Dan Mitchell doesn’t like.” But this blog isn’t a game show. It’s a serious forum* for discussing how we protect freedom and prosperity from ever-expanding…