The Economist magazine has a couple of good articles about Australia’s increasingly enviable economic status. Here’s a blurb from the first article, which outlines the pro-market reforms that enabled today’s prosperity. Only a dozen economies are bigger, and only six…
Daily Analysis
The Ryan and Rubio Medicare Videos: The GOP Begins to Fight Back
Republicans have finally woken up and are beginning to explain why Medicare needs to be reformed. Here’s a very good new video from Congressman Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee. He hits on key points regarding market competition versus government…
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nation Has the Most Debt of All?
Last night, I spoke at the closing dinner of the European Resource Bank. My message was simple and straightforward: Entitlement programs are killing the developed world. That’s not exactly a surprise, but what may be shocking is America’s relative position. In my…
I Don’t Care if You Wear Diapers as a 30-Year Old, but Don’t Ask Me to Subsidize Your Lifestyle
I wrote yesterday about the shocking case of a millionaire collecting food stamps. Today, I have an equally disgusting story of government waste. The Social Security program is actuarially bankrupt, with unfunded liabilities of several trillion dollars. Our topic…
Gee, I’m Glad I Pay Taxes to Give Food Stamps to a Millionaire
Not that we needed any additional evidence that the government wastes money in truly spectacular fashion, but this story from the Detroit Free Press is especially disgusting and outrageous. A man who won $2 million on a Michigan lottery show has told a TV station that…
Who’s Right on Medicare Reform, Ryan and Rivlin or Obama and Gingrich?
This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity discusses a proposal to solve Medicare’s bankrupt finances by replacing an unsustainable entitlement with a “premium-support” system for private insurance, also known as vouchers. This topic is very hot right…
The Wrong Way to Create Personal Social Security Retirement Accounts
I was excited when I saw that Professor Martin Feldstein of Harvard University had a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “Private Accounts Can Save Social Security.” This is great, I thought, another person advocating the kind of pro-growth,…
New York Leads the List of the Five Biggest Moocher States…and Utah Tops the List of the Five Most Self-Reliant States
I may have to stop being a New York Yankees fan. The state of my birth is a national embarrassment. People in the Empire State are national champions in the contest to rip off their fellow citizens according to analysis from USA Today. West Virginia, however, is the…
Obama Embraces Another Class Warfare Proposal – “Tax the Rich” Is the Universal Cure!
Under current law, Social Security is supposed to be an “earned benefit,” where taxes are akin to insurance premiums that finance retirement benefits for workers. And because there is a cap on retirement benefits, this means there also is a “wage-base cap” on the…
Would You Prefer Privatization or a Death Panel?
Republicans are understandably nervous about polling data showing considerable opposition to the Ryan plan’s Medicare proposal – particularly since they just voted for a budget resolution in the House of Representatives that includes such a reform. Their unease is…