I got involved in a bit of a controversy last year about presidential profligacy. Some guy named Rex Nutting put together some data on government spending and claimed that Barack Obama was the most frugal President in recent history. I pointed out that Mr. Nutting’s…
Daily Analysis
Another Failed Gun Control Experiment
It sounds strange, but my two favorite columns on gun control were authored by self-identified leftists. But they didn’t let ideology trump common sense. Justin Cronin, for instance, explained that restrictions on gun ownership undermined his ability to protect his…
Even European Commission Bureaucrats Realize that Taxes Can Be Too High!
I’m not a big fan of the European Commission. For those not familiar with this entity, it’s sort of the European version of the executive-branch bureaucracy we have in Washington. And like their counterparts in Washington, the Brussels-based bureaucracy enjoys a very…
Obamacare: A Get-Rich-Quick Scheme for Washington Insiders
Want to know why – as shown by this map – most of America’s richest counties are part of the metropolitan DC region? Part of the answer is that federal bureaucrats are overpaid. Another part of the answer is that the Washington area is filled with consultants and…
The Pervasive Evil of Communism…and the Moral Bankruptcy of Communist Apologists
I spoke earlier today at the 2013 Liberty Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. But I don’t think anybody is going to remember my speech about the collapse of the welfare state, even though I presented lots of powerful data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF, and also shared…
Why Tax Migration and Federalism Mean Doom for Left-Wing States such as New York, California, and Illinois
Maybe this means I’m not a nice person (notwithstanding my high score for tenderness in a recent test), but I can’t help but be happy when I read bad news about fiscal policy in high-tax welfare states. And because I’m a huge fan of tax competition, I get even happier…
A “Moderate” Dan Mitchell with “Few Strong Opinions” for a Kinder, Gentler Era of “Tenderness”
Early this year, I took a libertarian purity test put together by Professor Bryan Caplan at George Mason University. The good news is that I got a 94. Sounds like a solid A, right? Well, the bad news is that the test wasn’t on a 0-100 scale. The maximum grade was 160,…
Obamanomics, as Captured by Cartoonists
I’m a big fan of that form of satire. And if I’m looking at cartoons specifically about statist economic policy, my favorites include Chuck Asay’s dead pig cartoon, as well as his cartoon about the big bad wolf. And this Michael Ramirez headwinds cartoon is one of the…
Least. Surprising. Headline. Ever.
As illustrated by this chart, economists are lousy forecasters. To be more specific, economists are no better than fortune tellers when trying to make short-run macroeconomic forecasts. Heck, if we actually knew what was going to happen over the next 12 months, we’d…
Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which States Provide the Most Handouts of All?
About two years ago, I shared a map put together by a pro-statism organization that supposedly showed that welfare benefits were very miserly and not sufficiently generous to lift people out of poverty. My gut instinct was to reject the findings. As I wrote at the…