President Bush was a big spender, but President Obama is taking profligacy to the next level. In his first year in office, Obama pushed through a pork-filled “stimulus” that was supposed to increase jobs and prosperity (at least according to the discredited Keynesian…
Daily Analysis
Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXIII
If misery loves company, then American and English taxpayers can enjoy a bonding experience after reading this story about excessive pay for bureaucrats in Brussels. According to the Daily Telegraph, at least 1,000 (and probably more than 2,000) of these…
Robert Samuelson’s Unintentional Case for Austrian Economics
In his Washington Post column discussing a crisis of confidence among economists, Robert Samuelson correctly notes that Keynesians don’t seem to have the right answers. But he concludes that other schools of thought are similarly befuddled by current…
Faith in Government Regulators is Misplaced
Shakespeare would likely describe the latest major legislation winding its way through Congress as a piece of legislation crafted by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Rather than address the systemic distortions created by prior government policies,…
A Bigger Government Means a Less Prosperous Economy
A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University examines some of the academic research about the relationship between government spending and economic performance. Reinforcing many of the points I made in my theory and evidence videos, the GMU study…
Canadian Boondoggles and Russia Is More Capitalist than the U.S. (Again)
The G-20 gab-fest is in Canada this weekend, but Canadian taxpayers are definitely not winners. In a display of waste that might even embarrass a French politician, the Canadian government somehow is going to squander $1 billion hosting the event. I can’t even…
Bureaucracy Run Amok
John Derbyshire of National Review has an interesting article on bureaucratic harassment of private business. He begins with a personal story of something that happened when he first came to the United States and was working at a food-preparation company: The first…
The G-20 Fiscal Fight: A Pox on Both Their Houses
Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity”…
Big-Business Lobby Group Supports So-Called Stimulus and Obamacare and then has Gall to Complain about Big Government
Regular readers of this blog know that big corporations often are enemies of free markets and individual liberty. So it is hardly suprising to know that the Business Roundtable, a lobby representing CEOs of major companies, supported the wasteful and ineffective…
European Central Bank President Wants to Exacerbate Continent’s Fiscal Crisis
It’s been amusing, in an I-told-you-so fashion, to follow the fiscal crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states. And I feel like a voyeuristic ghoul as I observe the incredibly misguided bailout policies being adopted by the political elites (who are…