It takes a special skill – or an abundance of chutzpah – to harm a person and then turn around and argue that it was all for their own good. But that’s exactly what the Obama administration, and the sycophants at the New York Times, are doing in…
Daily Analysis
New CBO Numbers Show a Remarkably Simple Path to a Balanced Budget
A just-released report from the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office is getting lots of attention because the bureaucrats are now admitting that Obamacare will impose much more damage to the economy than they previously predicted. Of course, many people…
Obama’s Dismal Legacy of European-Style Long-Run Unemployment
Looking at labor markets, my biggest concern is the drop in labor force participation. The data from the Labor Department on the employment-population ratio, for instance, suggest a permanent reduction in the share of the population that is working. And since economic…
What Motivates the Left, Envy or Greed?
Why do statists support higher tax rates? The most obvious answer is greed. In other words, leftists want more tax money since they personally benefit when there’s a larger burden of government spending. And the greed can take many forms. They may want bigger…
Ideal Toys for Left-Wing Children
Imagine you’re a statist and you want to raise your kids to have the same spiteful and envious mindset. What’s the best approach? Well, sending your children to a government schoolis an obvious first step. But kids sometimes rebel against big-government orthodoxy, so…
MyRAs Are the Wrong Way of Helping Ordinary People Save Money
As part of his State-of-the-Union speech, President Obama announced he was going to unilaterally create a new retirement savings account that supposedly would be available to all workers. Employers would be mandated to facilitate these”MyRA” accounts, and the money…
Yet another Example of the Failure of Keynesian Economics
Early last year, with the sequester about to begin, President Obama stated that “these cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls.” He made this statement…
Hungary Rejects OECD Call To Hike Taxes
The Bureaucrats at the OECD don’t pay any taxes on their own salaries, but they work very hard to make sure everyone else is hit with exorbitant rates. They’ve persistently fought against tax competition to make it easier for politicians to raise taxes…
We Need a Debate about the Size of Government, but It Helps to Understand Basic Fiscal Facts
Self awareness is supposed to be a good thing, so I’m going to openly acknowledge that I have an unusual fixation on the size of government. I don’t lose a wink of sleep thinking about deficits, but I toss and turn all night fretting about the overall burden of…
A “Human Right” to Other People’s Money
One of the many differences between advocates of freedom and supporters of statism is how they view “rights.” Libertarians, along with many conservatives, believe in the right to be left alone and not molested by government. This is sometimes referred to in the…