The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the government. But it’s very easy for me to bluster […]

I’ve written many times about how investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners and other successful people migrate from high-tax states to low-tax states. Well, the same thing happens internationally, as France’s greedy politicians are now learning. It’s a lot harder for Americans to escape our tax system, though, in part because of reprehensible exit taxes that […]

I’ve written before about the remarkable vitality of Hong Kong and Singapore, two jurisdictions that deserve praise for small government and free markets. I have also praised Switzerland because of policies such as genuine federalism and financial privacy, and it goes without saying that I admire tax havens such as Bermuda, Monaco, and the Cayman […]

I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the simple reason that the “job opening and labor turnover” data from the Department […]

President Bush imposed a so-called stimulus plan in 2008 and President Obama imposed an even  bigger “stimulus” in 2009. Based upon the economy’s performance over the past five-plus years, those plans didn’t work. Japan has spent the past 20-plus years imposing one Keynesian scheme after another, and the net effect is economic stagnation and record […]

For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a mistake in their excel spreadsheet and this error was publicized in a […]

Since I just left Monaco and am now in Geneva, this is an appropriate time to extol the virtues of so-called tax havens.   But I don’t merely say nice things about low-tax jurisdictions when I’m in friendly environments. I believe in swinging my sword in the belly of the beast. That’s why I recently […]

The fiscal policy debate often drives me crazy because far too many people focus on deficits. The Keynesians argue that deficits are good for growth and this leads them to support more government spending. The “austerity” crowd at places such as the International Monetary Fund, by contrast, argues that deficits are bad for growth and […]

I’m not a very exciting guy. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m perusing the Budget and Economic Outlook from the Congressional Budget Office. But sometimes it pays to be a nerd because I just found an interesting tidbit of information. Here’s what CBO says about the anemic economic output we’re experiencing compared to the growth we […]

Art Laffer has a guaranteed spot in the liberty hall of fame because he popularized the common-sense notion that you can’t make any assumptions about tax rates and tax revenue without also figuring out what happens to taxable income. Lot’s of people on the left try to denigrate the “Laffer Curve,” but it’s worth noting […]