One reason I’m so bullish on Australia is that the nation has a privatized Social Security system called “Superannuation,” with workers setting aside 9 percent of their income in personal retirement accounts (rising to 12 percent by 2020). Established almost 30 years…
Daily Analysis
Barack Obama’s $8 Trillion Output Gap
I’m not a very exciting guy. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m perusing the Budget and Economic Outlook from the Congressional Budget Office. But sometimes it pays to be a nerd because I just found an interesting tidbit of information. Here’s what CBO says about the…
The Revised Bowles-Simpson Tax-Hike Plan Might Be even Worse than the Previous Version
I wrote last September that the budget plan put forward by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson was fatally flawed. There were some positive features in the plan, to be sure, such as lower marginal tax rates. And I suppose it’s worth noting that the burden of government…
It’s Tax Freedom Day, So Congratulations (if You Don’t Live in New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, etc)
It’s time to celebrate. That’s because we have reached Tax Freedom Day, meaning that – in the aggregate – we have finally earned enough money to pay for all the federal, state, and local taxes that will be imposed on us this year by our political masters. But we’re…
The United Kingdom Boldly Rejoins the Government Incompetence and Stupidity Contest
I periodically compare the actions of brainless politicians and bureaucrats in both the United States and the United Kingdom. One of the most bizarre examples I cited was from England. It showed how a local government decided to install the most pointless sign in the…
An Aggravating Reminder of Government Waste on Tax Day
Remember the Spending Quiz from 2010, which asked people to guess whether absurd examples of government waste were true or false? Well, we have a new video on government waste, though bureaucrats and politicians have become so profligate it doesn’t even bother to…
Entitlement Spending Is America’s Biggest Fiscal Challenge, but Discretionary Spending Is Still Far too High
If America descends into Greek-style fiscal chaos, there’s no doubt that entitlement programs will be the main factor. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Disability are all fiscal train wrecks today, and the long-run outlook for these programs is frightful. Just…
Burden of Government Spending Will Be $2 Trillion Higher in 2023 According to Obama’s Budget
If you include all the appendices, there are thousands of pages in the President’s new budget. But the first thing I do every year is find the table showing how fast the burden of government spending will increase. That’s Table S-1 of the budget, and it shows that the…
Paternalists Are Right…and Wrong
Whether they’re banning bake sales, federalizing school lunch menus, or criminalizing Big Gulps, the nanny-staters feel they have some special wisdom that gives them the right to tell other people how to live their lives. This irks libertarians since we value human…
Debunking Krugman’s European Austerity Narrative
Statists are in a tough position. For years, they’ve been saying the United States should be more like Europe. And, as shown in these very funny cartoons by Michael Ramirez and Bob Gorrell, President Obama is a cheerleader for that effort. But now Europe’s welfare…