Back in the 1960s, Clint Eastwood starred in a movie entitled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I was thinking that might be a good title for today’s post about some new research by Michelle Harding, a tax economist for the OECD. But then I realized that her study on…
Daily Analysis
Progress on the Laffer Curve*
The title of this piece has an asterisk because, unfortunately, we’re not talking about progress on the Laffer Curve in the United States. Even Keynes himself accepted this. Like many other economists throughout the ages, he understood and agreed with the principles…
Paul Krugman Is (Sort of) Right about a Plot against France
Every so often, when the temptation is too great, I’ll comment on something written by Paul Krugman. When he botched his analysis of Estonia, for instance, I joined that nation’s President in correcting some egregious errors. And I periodically remind people that…
Obama Administration Urges More Unemployment
President Obama has presided over a terrible jobs market. Unemployment is more than two-percentage points higher today than the White House claimed it would be if the so-called stimulus was enacted. Even more worrisome, the employment-population ratio seems to have…
Economic Growth Is the Best Way to Help the Poor, not Redistribution in Pursuit of Coerced Income Equality
Switzerland’s left-wing party has instigated a referendum for November 24 that asks voters to limit pay ranges so that a company wouldn’t be able to pay top employees more than 12 times what they’re paying their lowest-level employees. I talked with Neil Cavuto about…
The European Crisis (and American Future?) of Too Many Over-Compensated Bureaucrats
The only sustainable way of achieving more prosperity and higher living standards is to increase the quality and quantity of labor and capital in the economy. This may sound like boring econo-speak, but labor and capital are the two “factors of production” and our…
Obamanomics and the Vanishing American Worker
The Department of Labor has issued its monthly employment report and the item that will attract the most attention is that the unemployment rate marginally increased to 7.3 percent. That number is worthy of some attention, but I think it distracts attention from a far…
Obama Advocates Higher Unemployment for Lower-Skilled Workers (and Some Great Election News from Colorado)
Perhaps because he wants to divert attention from the slow-motion train wreck of Obamacare, the President is signaling that he will renew his efforts to throw more people into the unemployment line. Needless to say, that’s not how the White House would describe the…
What America Can Learn from the Faroe Islands about Social Security Reform
I’m currently in the Faroe Islands, a relatively unknown and semi-autonomous part of Denmark located in the North Atlantic. Sort of like Greenland, but too small to appear on most maps. I’m in this chilly archipelago for a speech to the annual meeting of the Faroese…
Easy Money Is Creating the Conditions for a Bigger European Economic Crisis
At the beginning of the year, I was asked whether Europe’s fiscal crisis was over. Showing deep thought and characteristic maturity, my response was “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, are you ;@($&^#’% kidding me?” But I then shared specific reasons for pessimism, including the…