Lenore Skenazy has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal on the topic of whether it should be a criminal offense to leave your kids in a car, even if just for a few minutes. Here’s how she describes the issue. One mother is hauled off to the police station. Another…
Daily Analysis
The Moochers and Looters in France Are Running Out of Victims
The late, great Margaret Thatcher famously said that “Socialist governments…always run out of other people’s money” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” is an iconic line from Apocalypse Now. Thinking about the fiscal mess in Europe, I’m going to combine…
By Global Standards, the Government Education Bureaucracy Gets the Most Money while Delivering Mediocre Results
I don’t write or speak about education very much, but, when asked, I explain that America has a very costly and inefficient government school monopoly. The strongest piece of evidence is an amazing chart put together by a Cato colleague. It shows that education…
Some Much-Needed Remedial Public Finance Economics for David Cameron and other Statists
In a recent interview with the BBC, I basically accused UK Prime Minister David Cameron of being a feckless and clueless demagogue who is engaged in a desperate effort to resuscitate his political future. I shouldn’t have been so kind. Cameron manages to combine bad…
Great Moments in IRS Incompetence
The IRS is worthy of scorn. It is a bloated bureaucracy that routinely violates the rights of taxpayers. But even I didn’t think it was possible for a collection of bureaucrats to display the blithering incompetence necessary to send $46 million of handouts to nearly…
The Never-Ending Story of Government Cost Overruns
Why does virtually everything the government does cost more than we’re initially told? In 2009, for instance, I warned that Obamacare would be much more costly than advertised, so I certainly wasn’t surprised several years later when the numbers began to climb. Heck,…
Responding to Scandals and Corruption, the IRS Rewards Itself with Giant Bonuses
What do you do if you’re part of a government bureaucracy that has been caught red-handed engaged in sleazy, corrupt, and (almost surely) illegal targeting of Americans for their political beliefs? But before you answer, keep in mind that your bureaucracy also has…
Europe’s Politicians Learned the Wrong Lesson from Saint Augustine
In my never-ending crusade to push for the right kind of austerity, I appeared on RT to pontificate on the merits of limited government. We got to cover a lot of material, so here’s some augmenting material. 1. The right kind of “austerity” is less government…
What’s the Better Role Model, France or Switzerland?
At the European Resource Bank conference earlier this month, Pierre Bessard from Switzerland’s Institut Liberal spoke on a panel investigating “The Link between the Weight of the State and Economic prosperity.” His presentation included two slides that definitely are…
Siding with the Heritage Foundation in the “Austerity” Fight with Paul Krugman and the Washington Post
I’m not reluctant to criticize my friends at the Heritage Foundation. In some cases, it is good-natured ribbing because of the Cato-Heritage softball rivalry, but there are also real policy disagreements. For instance, even though it is much better than current…