Real-World Evidence for Regime Uncertainty?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 13, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation

There certainly are logical reasons to think that Obama’s policies are dampening economic growth. Investors and entrepreneurs have little reason to produce and take risks, after all, when they know the burden of government is going to climb. Especially when you add...

How Would You Describe the Federal Government?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 12, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs

There’s an encouraging new poll from Gallup which reveals that 72 percent of Americans say something negative when asked for a one-word description of the federal government. Here’s the “word cloud” showing the results. As you can see, this is very similar to the...

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nation Has the Most Debt of All?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 9, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending

The Economist has a fascinating webpage that allows you to look at all the world’s nations and compare them based on various measures of government debt (and for various years). The most economically relevant measure is public debt as a share of GDP, and you can see...

Do We Have a Problem of Too Much Spending or Too Little Revenue?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation

Here’s a chart from Veronique de Rugy’s new article in The American. Amazing how the problem becomes obvious when you look at real numbers and don’t get trapped into using “baseline” math (as I explain in my latest video).

Obama’s Job-Killing Policies: A Picture Says a Thousand Words

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics

The new unemployment data has been released and it’s not a pretty picture. Literally and figuratively. This image is all we need to know about the success of President Obama’s big-government policies. The lower line is from a White House report in early 2009 and it...