In a column in today’s New York Post, I mock White House unemployment calculations and then explain why companies are not anxious to hire more workers. The White House last year released a supposedly scientific analysis that claimed to show that adopting the…
Daily Analysis
Great Moments in Government-Run Healthcare
While it will be nice to say “I told you so” when Obamacare leads to bad results in America, I would much prefer to avoid having stories like this appear in the American press. But in the United Kingdom, where government controls more than 90 percent of the healthcare…
One Fish, Two Fish, High Tax, Low Tax
With apologies to Dr. Seuss, maybe that will be the name of a future book I’ll write about the anti-competitive impact of high tax rates. And one of my chapters will be about what we can learn from the states. Richard Rahn’s column in the Washington Times reviews some…
The Joint Committee on Taxation’s Voodoo Economics
The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial this morning on the obscure – but critically important – issue of measuring what happens to tax revenue in response to changes in tax policy. This is sometimes known as the dynamic scoring vs static scoring debate and…
Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXVI
Even I am shocked about how politicians and bureaucrats are bilking the poor people of Bell, California. I wish I had this example reported by Bloomberg for my video on overpaid bureaucrats, but mostly I hope that taxpayers rise up in revolt against the way the…
Good News from Romania
Redistributionists hate the flat tax, and this sentiment is widely shared by other statists. These proponents of big government want the tax system to to punish success and generate loot that can be used to buy votes (though they don’t seem to understand that if they…
Abortion, Third-Party Payer, and the Cost of Health Care
A major problem with America’s healthcare system, both before and after Obamacare, is the fact that consumers very rarely spend their own money when obtaining healthcare. Known as third-party payer, this problem exists in part because government directly finances…
Wherein I Agree With The Statists: Don't Let BP Win
Iain Murray writes at the Washington Examiner that advocacy groups Change.org and the Alliance for Climate Protection are arguing – in an email entitled, “Don’t Let BP Win!” – that “Stalling climate and energy legislation would be a big win for oil…
For Heaven’s Sake, America Is Not One of the World’s 17 Most-Authoritarian Nations
A writer for the Atlantic (or perhaps an editor in charge of headlines) is so clueless about world affairs that he lists America as one of the world’s most-authoritarian nations. As someone who is constantly criticizing government, I certainly have no objection to…
Federally-Funded Job-Training Programs Don’t Work
Kudos to the New York Times for actually looking at the evidence and publishing a story exposing the costly failure of job-training programs financed by the federal government. I also couldn’t help but note that the Obama Administration is claiming that the programs…