by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There are two serious problems with America’s Social Security system. Almost everyone knows about the first problem, which is that the system is bankrupt, with huge unfunded liabilities of about $30 trillion. The other crisis is that the system gives workers a lousy...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 28, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I’ve complained endlessly that America’s fiscal problem is too much spending, and that deficits and debt are best understood as symptoms of that underlying disease. So I’m obviously a big fan of this new video from the folks at Learn Liberty. I like how they use...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 31, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly. When CBO...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 20, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I don’t blame the Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position. I’m mystified, though, why some...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 15, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the person Obama put in charge of Medicare made some very interesting observations about prices, competition, and markets, but then drew exactly the wrong conclusion about what was needed to solve the third-party payer problem in...