by Dan Mitchell | Apr 17, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
Every Thanksgiving, I share the story of how the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because of their experiment with collectivized agriculture. Once the settlers shifted to a system based on private ownership, however, their problems disappeared. The obvious moral of...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 15, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Taxation
There are some fortunate people (in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Monaco, Vanuatu, Antigua and Barbuda, and a few other places) who don’t have to pay income taxes. The United States used to be in that lucky club. The income tax did not become a permanent blight upon...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 14, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Socialism
What’s socialism? Is it the centrally planned economies of Cuba and North Korea? Or the kleptocracies of Zimbabwe and Venezuela? How about the interventionist welfare states of Greece, Italy, and France? Or the redistribution-oriented Nordic nations? Since socialism...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 12, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Europe
Thanks to the glorious miracle of capitalism, I’m writing this column 36,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. I’m on my way back from Europe, where I ground through about a dozen presentations as part of a swing through 10 countries. Most of my speeches were about the...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Taxation
Singapore is routinely ranked as the world’s 2nd-freest economy, trailing only Hong Kong. The nation’s laissez-faire approach has yielded big dividends. Singapore is now über prosperous, richer than both the United States and United Kingdom. But there are problems in...