I suggested last year that President Obama adopt “my work here is done” as a campaign slogan. Admittedly, that was merely an excuse to share this rather amusing poster (and you can see the same hands-on-hips pose, by the way, in this clever Michael Ramirez cartoon). But I want to make a serious point. For […]

There are all sorts of ways to measure the burden of government spending. The most obvious approach is to look at the share of economic output consumed by the public sector. That’s what I did, for instance, when comparing fiscal policy in France and Switzerland. And it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyhow) […]

What’s the biggest fiscal problem facing the developed world? To an objective observer, the answer is a rising burden of government spending, caused by poorly designed entitlement programs, growing levels of dependency, and unfavorable demographics. The combination of these factors helps to explain why almost all industrialized nations – as confirmed by BIS, OECD, and […]

Remember when you got your first paycheck, presumably when you were a teenager? If you’re like most people, you worked a bunch of hours and calculated how much money you expected to receive, only to then be disappointed when the check you received was for a much smaller amount. That was your rude welcome to […]

The budget deficit this year is projected to be significantly smaller than it has been in recent years and some of our statist friends claim that this shows the desirability and effectiveness of higher taxes. I’m not persuaded, mostly because our big long-run fiscal challenge is a rising burden of government spending. And the fact […]

I sometimes make fun of Republicans for being the “Stupid Party,” but I get genuinely agitated when they’re the “Statist Party.” You can forgive someone for not being intelligent, after all, but it’s much harder to look the other way when they deliberately and knowingly do the wrong thing. And that seems to be a […]

I damned Obama with faint praise last year by asserting that he would never be able to make America as statist as France. My main point was to explain that the French people, notwithstanding their many positive attributes, seem hopelessly statist. At least that’s how they vote, even though they supposedly support spending cuts according […]

I never thought I would wind up in Costco’s monthly magazine, but I was asked to take part in a pro-con debate on “Should offshore tax havens be illegal?” Given my fervent (and sometimes risky) support of tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty, regular readers won’t be surprised to learn that I jumped at […]

I’ve relentlessly complained that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate among all developed nations. And if you look at all the world’s countries, our status is still very dismal. According to the the Economist, we have the second highest corporate tax rate, exceeded only by the United Arab Emirates. But some people […]

I periodically cite new academic research about tax policy and economic activity. I sometimes even publicize research from international bureaucracies showing the link between taxes and growth. I’m not naive enough to think that any particular study will change minds, but when the bulk of the research unambiguously tells us that lower tax rates are […]