by Dan Mitchell | Feb 25, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When I’m asked for a basic tutorial on fiscal policy, I normally share my four videos on the economics of government spending and my primer on fundamental tax reform. But this six-minute interview may be a quicker introduction to spending issues since I had the...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 5, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I don’t like writing about deficits and debt because I don’t want to deflect attention from the more important underlying problem of excessive government spending. Indeed, I constantly explain that spending is what diverts resources from the productive sector of the...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 26, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
I’ve warned many times that Italy is the next Greece. Simply stated, there’s a perfect storm of bad news. Government is far too big, debt is too high, and the economy is too sclerotic. I’ve always assumed that the country would suffer a full-blown fiscal crisis when...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 17, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
The Congressional Budget Office just released a Monthly Budget Review showing a $782 billion deficit for the 2018 fiscal year. My recommendation is to mostly ignore data on red ink. Yes, it is possible that a country can get in trouble because of deficits and debt,...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 11, 2018 | Blogs
I’m not a big fan of the International Monetary Fund and I regularly criticize the international bureaucracy for its relentless advocacy in favor of higher taxes. But that’s not what worries me most about the IMF. To be sure, higher fiscal burdens undermine economic...
