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 political class (it also tried to have me arrested, but I don’t hold that against them). But the IMF […]
read more...Years ago, I shared a very funny poster that suggests that more government is hardly ever the right answer to any question. Yet in Washington, the standard response to any screwup by government is to make government even bigger. Sort of Mitchell’s Law on steroids. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the Ebola crisis. The bureaucracies that have received […]
read more...I confess that I get a bit of perverse pleasure when a left-leaning media outlet screws up and inadvertently shares information that helps the cause of limited government. A New York Times columnist, for instance, pushed for a tax-hiking fiscal agreement back in 2011 based on a chart showing that the only successful budget deal was the one […]
read more...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 issuffering from economic stagnation caused by a bloated public sector. Barring dramatic change, another fiscal crisis is […]
read more...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) performance of economies in the United States, Argentina, and France. But perhaps the most encouraging thing about […]
read more...Obama administration presses ahead in its war on for-profit colleges.
read more...Arguments in favor of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act start and end with tax evasion. Those who question the validity of a massive and invasive financial dragnet for the purpose of catching a few tax cheats are accused of either being a tax evader themselves or of condoning evasion. FATCA proponents recognize no legitimate […]
read more...The United Nations is not nearly as bad as other international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or the International Monetary Fund. But that’s because the U.N. tends to be completely ineffective. So even when the bureaucrats push for bad policy, they don’t have much ability to move the ball in the wrong direction. But […]
read more...Back in 2010, I shared some wise words from Walter Williams and Theodore Dalrymple about how society can become unstable when people figure they can “vote themselves money.” On a related note, I shared the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons in 2011 and the “Danish party boat” image in 2014. Both of these posts highlighted the danger that […]
read more...In the last few months of 2013, Obamacare suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks dealing with everything from a clunky website to plan cancellations tothe White House feeling compelled to arbitrarily ignore the law. Since that time, though, people seem to have adapted to this new burden. But adaptation doesn’t mean approval. There are still serious problems with Obamacare, as […]
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