As a supporter of genuine capitalism, which means the right of contract and the absence of coercion, I don’t think there should be any policies that help or hinder unions. The government should simply be a neutral referee that enforces contracts and upholds the rule…
Daily Analysis
Tax Day Fantasies
I realize this may be a thought crime by DC standards, but it sure would be nice to eliminate the high tax rates that undermine economic growth and reduce American competitiveness. At the risk of sharing too much information, I fantasize about a world without…
Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth from Washington?
Last year, I conducted an informal poll at a conference in Paris. I explained to the audience that the public sector consumed about 57 percent of the French economy and I asked them whether they got more services and better government than the people of Germany (where…
Agreeing with Leftists (Sort of) about the World’s Sixth-Largest “Tax Haven”
To put it mildly, I’m not a fan of the so-called Tax Justice Network. In a moment of typical understatement, I referred to the U.K.-based group as “…a bunch of crazy Euro-socialists.” And to give you an idea of why I don’t like them, here’s some of what I wrote about…
More Obamacare Cartoons
The statists are claiming Obamacare is now a success. Needless to say, I think this is a laughable assertion. Indeed, I shared a very clever graphic from Ted Cruz to help explain why it’s hardly a big achievement to destabilize the insurance market and then coerce…
Why Did Western Nations Continue to Prosper in the 20th Century even though Fiscal Burdens Increased?
In the pre-World War I era, the fiscal burden of government was very modest in North America and Western Europe. Total government spending consumed only about 10 percent of economic output, most nations were free from theplague of the income tax, and the value-added…
The Left’s Pro-Single Payer Health Care Graphic: Right Diagnosis, Wrong Prescription
The new leftist website, Vox, has an article by Sarah Kliff on Vermont’s experiment with a single-payer healthcare system. But I don’t really have much to say about what’s happening in the Green Mountain State, other than to declare that I much prefer healthcare…
Member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Admits White House 77 Cents Pay Gap Claim Is Bogus
President Obama and many other leftist politicians are running around the nation claiming that supposedly greedy employers are deliberately choosing to reduce their profits. They’re not actually making that specific claim, but that’s what they’re asserting, for all…
The Lesson We Should Learn from the Fort Hood Shooting
One of the best ways of reducing crime is to make anti-social behavior more expensive. Simply stated, the goal is to alter the cost-benefit analysis of criminals. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that I’m assuming that bad guys are geniuses who put together spreadsheets…
The Golden Rule of Spending Restraint
My tireless (and probably annoying) campaign to promote my Golden Rule of spending restraint is bearing fruit. The good folks at the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal allowed me to explain the fiscal and economic benefits that accrue when nations limit the…