by Dan Mitchell | Apr 8, 2026 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I constantly remind people that government spending is the most important fiscal variable, not deficits/debt. After all, it is government spending that drains resources from the productive sector of the economy, regardless of whether it is financed...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 8, 2026 | Blogs, States
My First Theorem of Government is the simple observation that insiders are the biggest beneficiaries of government. I was motivated to release that theorem because bad news for taxpayers is good news for bureaucrats, consultants, contractors, lobbyists, and...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 2, 2026 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
One of the key insights of good tax policy is that people respond to incentives. If tax rates are punitive, people will do what they can to protect themselves from predatory government. Especially if they have any ability to control the timing,...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 26, 2026 | Blogs, Regulations, States
I’ve written nearly 8,000 columns over the past 16 years and one of the most popular (6th-highest number of views) was a 2011 satirical piece about how California and Texas politicians would deal with a vicious coyote. If you don’t want to bother reading that column,...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 10, 2026 | Blogs, Taxation
At the end of December, I wrote about the pro-spending lobbies pushing to put an insanely foolish retroactive wealth tax on the ballot later this year. I followed up last month with a column about rich people prudently escaping the state. Today,...
