by Dan Mitchell | Jul 11, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
When I first got to Washington in the mid-1980s, one of the big issues was the supposedly invincible Japanese economy. Folks on the left claimed that Japan was doing well because the government had considerable power to micro-manage the economy with industrial policy....
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 9, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending
The European Commission’s data-gathering bureaucracy, Eurostat, has just published a new report on government finances for the region. And with Greece’s ongoing fiscal turmoil getting headlines, this Eurostat publication is worthwhile because it debunks the notion,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 7, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When I make speeches about fiscal policy, I oftentimes share a table showing the many nations that have made big progress by enforcing spending restraint over multi-year periods. I then ask audiences a rhetorical question about a possible list of nations that have...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 2, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Advocates of economic liberty, free market, and small government haven’t enjoyed many victories in the 21st Century. Government got bigger and more expensive during Bush’s reign, starting in his first year with the No Bureaucrat Left Behind legislation and then ending...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 30, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
Folks on the left sometimes act as if the Nordic nations somehow prove that big government isn’t an impediment to prosperity. As I’ve pointed out before, they obviously don’t spend much time looking at the data. So let’s give them a reminder. Here are the rankings...
