Bono recently made waves for defending capitalism and its role in alleviating poverty. Rock stars aren’t supposed to express appreciation for the same free markets that have made them wealthy. But not only has he witnessed first hand how markets work to bring people out of poverty, he’s even defending tax competition! Bono has made […]

The relationship between federal and state governments – the division of power between the two levels being known as federalism – is an integral part of the American constitutional system. Federalism uses separate and competing spheres of sovereignty to check the growth and power of government as a whole. Unfortunately, that system has been steadily […]

One of the challenges of good entitlement reform (or even bad entitlement reform) is that recipients think they’ve “earned” benefits. If you tell them that programs such as Medicare are unsustainable and need to be changed, some of them suspect you’re trying to somehow cheat them. After all, they were forced to cough up payroll […]

I’ve shared several videos that make the case against Obamacare. Here’s one narrated by a Dutch woman warning that America shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of European government-run healthcare. Here’s one from Reason TV about how free markets produce lower healthcare costs. Here’s one explaining the need to deal with the government-caused third-party-payer crisis. And I […]

If I had to identify a “least-favorite” international bureaucracy, it almost certainly would be the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD doesn’t waste as much money as the United Nations, it might not cause as much macroeconomic instability as the International Monetary Fund, and it presumably doesn’t produce as much bad research […]

As we get closer to the debt limit, the big spenders in Washington are becoming increasingly hysterical about the supposed possibility of default if politicians lose the ability to borrow more money. I testified yesterday to the Joint Economic Committee on “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship” and I explained (reiterating points I made back […]

We have an amazing man-bites-dog story today. Let’s begin with some background information. A member of the European Commission recently warned that: “Tax increases imposed by the Socialist-led government in France have reached a “fatal level”…[and] that a series of tax hikes since the Socialists took power 14 months ago – including €33bn in new […]

I’m testifying tomorrow to the Joint Economic Committee about “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship.” I won’t give away what I’m going to say (though you can probably figure out my views rather easily by reading this, this and this), but I do want to share a chart from my testimony. It shows that it […]

As an advocate of small government, I’m often distressed that I sometimes have to rely on Republicans in Washington to fight statism. Why am I distressed? Because some of the worst people in Washington are GOPers. They may give lip service to fiscal responsibility when campaigning, but then conveniently forget that rhetoric when it’s time […]