by Dan Mitchell | Dec 18, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
One of the key ways of controlling state and local tax burdens, according to this map from the Tax Foundation, is to not have an income tax. But that’s not too surprising. States have just a couple of ways of generating significant tax revenue, so it stands to reason...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Tax Competition, Taxation
Hopefully we’re all disgusted when insiders rig the system to rip off taxpayers. And I suspect you’re not surprised to know that the worst examples come from California, which is in a race with Illinois to see which state can become the Greece of America. Well, the...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2012 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
I have a love-hate attitude toward international bureaucracies. I’m mostly negative about organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, and OECD. In part this is because they are a very expensive burden on taxpayers, but also because they generally push for bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 9, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, States, Taxation
One of my favorite Cato Institute publications is the Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, which is produced by my colleague Chris Edwards. The report card uses variables such as the burden of government spending and the degree of class warfare tax policy...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 28, 2012 | Blogs, Economics
I despise protectionism. Mostly because it is bad economic policy, but also because politicians often use protectionism as a way of diverting attention from their own failures. So when I appeared on Neil Cavuto’s show to comment on President Obama’s criticism of...
