As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration will propose a three-year freeze for a portion of the budget known as “non-defense discretionary” spending. Many critics will correctly note that this is like going on a drunken binge in…
Daily Analysis
The Pampered and Insulated Life of Unionized Government Workers.
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that only 7.2 percent of private-sector workers belong to unions, which makes sense since unions behave in a myopic fashion and undermine competitiveness (and thus reduce jobs in the long run). On the other had,…
Good Advice for Republicans from Tom Sowell.
I’ve always been mystified by GOP politicians, pollsters, and consultants who argue that the GOP needs to support big government in order to win votes. The biggest victories for Republicans in living memory, after all, are the 1980 and 1994 landslides, when the…
Replace TSA Incompetence with Market Efficiency.
Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a great column in USA Today explaining why we should let private companies be in charge of airline security. As a frequent traveler, I wish this would happen, but governments rarely give up power once they have expanded into a new…
Statism Update from Brussels.
It seems that the European Union’s governing entities, the European Commission and the semi-ceremonial European Parliament, combine the worst features of statism and collectivism from the entire continent. The Euro-crats make lots of noises about subsidiarity…
Sometimes the French Oppose Harmonization
The French government is relentlessly awful in its support for tax harmonization, regulatory harmonization, and other policies to drag other nations into the cesspool of statism. But France’s desire for a one-size-fits-all approach miraculously vanishes when it…
Attacks on Wall Street Hurt American Global Competitiveness.
In a National Review Online article, Kevin Williamson notes that a proposed federal banking tax seems purely inspired by vilification politics, but will none-the-less put American banks at a very real competitive disadvantage in the global market: The new proposed tax…
Oregonians Contemplate Digging Their Hole Deeper.
Oregon voters are currently deciding on personal and business income tax increases. Should the tax hikes pass, look for Oregonian businesses to avail themselves of the advantages of tax competition and move to other states, such as nearby Washington: A great beauty…
Germany Opposes EU-Wide Tax
German politicians are notoriously bad on European issues, almost always pushing for more centralization, harmonization, and bureaucracy. So it is surprising to see that the German government is rejecting a Luxembourg proposal to give the EU a direct source of tax…
The American People Reject Big Government.
According to a Washington Post story, Obama wants to be the anti-Reagan, a President who permanently changes the American people’s attitude about big government. Obama’s efforts to make statism popular, however, are not exactly working out as he hoped….