Okay, the title of this post is an absurd exaggeration, but I am not optimistic about the future of the United Kingdom. Government spending has exploded over the last ten-plus years (the largest expansion in the burden of government spending among developed nations),…
Daily Analysis
Greece’s Problem Is High Tax Rates, not Tax Evasion
The New York Times has an article describing widespread tax evasion in Greece, along with an implication that the country’s fiscal crisis is largely the result of unpaid taxes and could be mostly solved if taxpayers were more obedient to the state. This is an…
Greek Chutzpah
There’s an old joke that if you owe a bank $10,000, you have a problem, but if you owe a bank $10,000,000, the bank has a problem. The Greek government certainly seems to have that attitude. Short-sighted and corrupt politicians in Athens have spent their nation…
American and German Taxpayers Should Be Rioting, not Greek Moochers
My blood pressure spiked after reading this story from the UK-based Times. The Greeks are rioting in the streets because they want our money (i.e., an IMF bailout) and they want to keep all the inefficient and wasteful government policies that caused the crisis. In…
The Greek Bailout.
I get a lot of email asking me about Greece, especially since I don’t give the issue much attention on the blog. I am paying close attention to what’s happening, especially since Greece is a canary in the coal mine. But I generally try to avoid being…
Europe Should Not Copy America's Imperialist and Anti-Growth Worldwide Tax Regime
The overall fiscal burden in the United States may be lower than it is in Europe, but there are some features of the internal revenue code that are far worse than what can be found on the other side of the Atlantic. America has a “worldwide” tax system,…
Bashing the VAT in the New York Post.
My life is now devoted to saving America from the European-style national sales tax known as the value-added tax. Writing in the New York Post, I explain that the impact of a VAT in Europe is bigger government, not smaller deficits: The real-world evidence shows that…
Great Moments in International Bureaucracy.
I don’t know what’s more laughable, the fact that some EU bureaucracy is creating an 80-minute poem (with dancing, no less), or that the “low-grade bank clerk” who masquerades as the European Council President is going to publish a a book of…
More Sarkozy Demagoguery on Financial Regs.
Nicholas Sarkozy spoke at Columbia University in New York on Monday and, as he has done before, demonstrated that everyone who calls themselves a conservative is not a free marketer. The French President pressed for an expansion of global financial bureaucracies and…
Government Corruption Watch, Part II.
Sleazy political behavior does not necessarily require a bag of money being handed to a poltician in a deserted parking garage. Sometimes it is blatantly visible. A good example is the European version of “cap-and-trade” climate legislation. While the…