President Obama’s budget proposal was unveiled today, generating all sorts of conflicting statements from both parties. Some of the assertions wrongly focus on red ink rather than the size of government. Others rely on dishonest Washington budget math, which means…
Daily Analysis
Is Warren Buffett’s Support for Higher Taxes a Way of Paying Back Politicians for Big-Government Policies that Line His Pockets?
President Obama, echoed by the establishment media, routinely trumpets Warren Buffett’s support for higher taxes. If this rich guy is willing to pay more, the story goes, then surely the rest of us peasants should just roll over and acquiesce to the President’s…
Data in New World Bank Report Shows that Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why…
The Worst Dollar-for-Dollar Spending in DC
Examples of government waste are not hard to find in Washington DC, but identifying the worst, most egregious instances of destructive spending is more difficult. Based on the facts cited by a new CF&P Libertas published earlier this week, a strong case can be…
Notwithstanding Tea Party Election in 2010, Republicans on Capitol Hill Still Susceptible to Big-Government Virus
I’ve written before about the importance of getting rid of the Department of Transportation, and I’ve also written about Republicans getting in bed with big government. So you can imagine how agitated I was to read this article about transportation spending at…
Acting as the Typhoid Mary of the Global Economy, the OECD Urges Higher Taxes in Latin America
Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white? Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to…
DC’s Unjustified Optimism
According to Gallup, D.C. has the highest amount of economic confidence in the country…and it’s not even close. It would be easy to say that Gallup over-sampled White House staffers wearing Keynesian blinders, but the truth is far more depressing. It would…
Classic Cartoon on So-Called Stimulus Is Amusing and Economically Accurate
People often ask why I put so much political humor on this site. The easy answer is that I like a good joke. But I also find that some cartoons and jokes do a very good job of helping people understand economics. I’ve always liked this cartoon, for instance, because…
Should the United Nations Have the Power to Impose Global Taxes?
What’s the worst policy idea that would cause the most damage to society? I’m tempted to say the value-added tax since our hopes of restraining the federal government will be greatly undermined if we give the buffoons in Washington a new source of revenue. Indeed,…
New Congressional Budget Office Numbers Once Again Show that Modest Spending Restraint Would Eliminate Red Ink
Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly. When CBO…