by Dan Mitchell | Oct 11, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe
There are three important things to understand about Western Europe. The burden of government is larger than it is in the United States. Lower-income and middle-class taxpayers finance that extra spending. Europe’s greater fiscal burden is associated with less...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
If you want to understand Washington’s fiscal profligacy, this chart based on OMB data shows what has happened to the federal budget over the past 15 years. There are two big things to understand. We had some very admirable spending restraint...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 2, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
One of Margaret Thatcher’s famous observations was that socialist governments fail because they inevitably run out of other people’s money. If I’m in a pedantic mood, I will nit-pick that statement by pointing out that she should have...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 1, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs
When people (correctly) complain about Washington’s inefficiency and incompetence, I tell them that one of the problems is that the federal government is simply too big. Indeed, this is the core message of my 7th Theorem of Government. Simply...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 29, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Since I’m a numbers wonk, I think the most powerful evidence for the failure of Cuban socialism is comparing that nation’s growth (or lack thereof) to what’s happened in Taiwan and (pre-crackdown) Hong Kong. They all had similar levels of...
