Fiscal Fights with Friends: We Don’t Need Two Class-Warfare Political Parties

by Dan Mitchell | Apr 16, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Taxation

Time for another edition of my series on “Fiscal Fights with Friends,” where I debunk supposed conservatives who advocate for statist policies. Today’s topic is tax increases, an issue that I’ve had to address before (examples can be found here, here,...

The Conservative Argument Against Foreign Aid and the Libertarian Argument Against Foreign Aid

by Dan Mitchell | Apr 7, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Waste

There are many strains of libertarians (ranging from left-libertarians to anarcho-capitalists), but I feel safe in stating that they all are skeptical of foreign aid. At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two reasons for the skepticism. Libertarians...

Fiscal Policy in the United Kingdom: Profligacy, Dishonesty, and Dependency

by Dan Mitchell | Mar 25, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation

Last decade, three things made me optimistic about the United Kingdom. A lengthy period of spending restraint from 2010-2019. Voters chose in 2016 to escape the European Union. Boris Johnson was elected to deliver Brexit in 2019. Sadly, I was hopelessly naive. I...

Texas vs. California, Part IX

by Dan Mitchell | Mar 24, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, States

In Part XIII of my series comparing Texas and California (previous seven editions can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I shared data showing that the burden of state spending was growing much faster...

Advice for DOGE: No More Subsidies for the Paris-Based OECD

by Dan Mitchell | Mar 10, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation

As I explained in this 2010 video, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international bureaucracy based in Paris that advocates for higher taxes and bigger government. I then wrote in 2011 that eliminating subsidies for this...