by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’ve argued that we’ll get better government if we make it smaller. And Mark Steyn humorously observed, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.” But can these assertions be quantified? I had an email...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 7, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs
It’s not uncommon for people to accuse libertarians of using “scare tactics” and “hyperbole.” They say we present “worst-case scenarios” of what happens when government gets involved, such as when I warn that a value-added tax would become a revenue machine for big...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 4, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Bureaucracy, Government Spending
I’ve been banging the drum for years about Washington being a racket for the benefit of politicians, cronyists, bureaucrats, contractors, lobbyists, interest groups, and other insiders. I’ve written about horrific examples of bloated spending that line the...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 30, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Since I criticized Paul Ryan’s Roadmap budget plan yesterday as part of my column against the value-added tax, I now feel obliged to defend the proposal in one important respect. But first, some background. In a recent piece for the American Enterprise Institute,...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 27, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
The world is a laboratory, with lots of experiments to see if a nation can prosper with big government and pervasive intervention. The results are not encouraging. I’ve written about France being a basket case, over and over again. And I am equally pessimistic...
