I’ve never met Robert Murphy, but he is a reprehensible person. I don’t know if he’s as bad as Michael Wolfensohn, but he’s definitely a sorry excuse for a human being. For all I know, Mr. Murphy goes to church every day, volunteers at a homeless shelter, reads books…
Daily Analysis
From East Coast to West Coast, Bureaucrats Are Ripping Off Taxpayers
Let’s start in Washington, where USA Today reports that there are “at least 17,828 federal employees whose annualized salaries totaled $180,000 or more in September 2010.” That’s rather distressing news for taxpayers, but these excerpts from the story provide…
States Show Tax Competition in Action
We often look at how tax competition affects nations, but the same concept applies to U.S. states as well. Two recent reports demonstrate what happens when politicians fail to understand just how tax competition works. In a report from the Maine Heritage Policy…
Do Budget Deficits Threaten American Competitiveness? Dan Mitchell vs. the Establishment
I recently took part in a symposium on “The Budget Deficit and U.S. Competitiveness.” Put together by the Council on Foreign Relations, five of us were asked to concisely explain our thoughts on the issue. Here’s some of what I wrote: Excessive government spending can…
New Job Numbers Are a Mixed Bag for the Economy, but Bad News for Obama
The Labor Department released its latest job numbers today and they remind me of Clint Eastwood’s 1966 classic, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” The good news is that the economy created 244,000 new jobs, the biggest gain in almost one year. And the jobs were in the…
Let’s Make Fun of Germany and France…But Then Learn from their Mistakes
We have two completely unrelated topics from Germany and France, but both fit in the broader theme of Europe’s gradual, self-inflicted suicide. Let’s start with the Germans. I’m not a big fan of the country’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel. She is supposedly a…
Back-Door Tax Increases Are a Recipe for Bigger Government
Martin Feldstein’s on a roll, but not in a good way. Earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, he advocated throwing in the towel on reforming Social Security into a system of personal retirement accounts. Today, in the New York Times, he endorses big tax…
Seven Reasons to Oppose Higher Taxes
As I have explained elsewhere, tax increases are a bad idea – unless you favor bigger government. And I’ve already added my two cents to the tax debate between Senator Coburn and Grover Norquist regarding the desirability of higher taxes. So it won’t surprise anyone…
Just How Many Jobs Can Firing One Bureaucrat Create?
I mentioned the other day a claim from CEI that regulatory burdens cost the economy nearly $2 trillion in 2008. The Phoenix Center also recently produced a policy bulletin examining the costs of the regulatory state (Hat-tip: Big Government). In quantifying the…
The Wrong Way to Create Personal Social Security Retirement Accounts
I was excited when I saw that Professor Martin Feldstein of Harvard University had a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “Private Accounts Can Save Social Security.” This is great, I thought, another person advocating the kind of pro-growth,…