During the dark ages, nations like China were relatively advanced while Europeans were living in squalid huts. But that began to change several hundred years ago. Europe experienced the enlightenment and industrial revolution while the empires of Asia languished. What…
Daily Analysis
Based on What’s Happening in the Czech Republic, Perhaps the Lesson to Learn Is that All Right-Wing Parties Are Controlled by Morons
I periodically mock Republicans for being the stupid party. Yes, some of them probably mean well, but they have this lemming-like instinct to throw themselves on hand grenades. But I noted back in April that the supposedly right-wing Christian Democrat party in…
Study from German Economists Shows that Tax Competition and Fiscal Decentralization Limit Income Redistribution
If we want to avoid the kind of Greek-style fiscal collapse implied by this BIS and OECD data, we need some external force to limit the tendency of politicians to over-tax and over-spend. That’s why I’m a big advocate of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and…
Spending Cuts and Tax Cuts Should Be an All-of-the-Above Option, Not an Either-Or Choice
I’m in Slovenia where I just finished indoctrinating educating a bunch of students on the importance of Mitchell’s Golden Rule as a means of restraining the burden of government spending. And I emphasized that the fiscal problem in Europe is the size of government,…
A Miserable and Hopeless Fiscal Outlook for the United Kingdom
If you live in America and believe in free markets and small government, it’s easy to get depressed. We suffered through eight years of wasteful spending and misguided intervention under Bush, and now we’re enduring four years of additional spending and red tape under…
America’s Corporate Tax Rate is So Punitive that Companies Are Even Moving to Welfare States Like the U.K. to Be More Competitive
I was a bit surprised couple of years ago to read that an American company re-located to Canada to benefit from better tax policy. But I wasn’t totally shocked by the news because Canada has been lowering tax rates, reducing the burden of government spending, and…
Romney is Right that You Can Lower Tax Rates and Reduce Tax Preferences without Hurting the Middle Class
Even though I’m not a Romney fan, I sometimes feel compelled to defend him against leftist demagoguery. But instead of writing about tax havens, as I’ve done in the past, today we’re going to look at incremental tax reform. The left has been loudly asserting that the…
Our Government’s Shameful Priorities: Heavier Punishment for Bank Account Reporting Miscue than for Child Porn
If you can read the following and not get upset, you are not a good person. Please move to France (where higher taxes are “patriotic”) and don’t come back. I’m engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but you’ll hopefully understand after reading this excerpt from a very…
Germany’s Dark Vision for Europe
Like Sweden and Denmark, Germany is a semi-rational welfare state. It generally relies on a market-oriented approach in areas other than fiscal policy, and it avoided the Keynesian excesses that caused additional misery and red ink in America (though it is far from…
It’s Simple to Balance the Budget with Modest Spending Restraint
Now that new numbers have been released by the Congressional Budget Office, it’s time once again for me to show how easy it is to balance the budget with modest spending restraint (though please remember our goal should be smaller government, not fiscal balance). I…