by Dan Mitchell | Dec 23, 2018 | Blogs
I’m not as eloquent on the issue as Professor Daniel Lin, but I recently explained on Fox Business that government subsidies for higher education have enabled big increases in tuition, an outcome that has been good for bureaucrats and bad for students. In effect, this...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 20, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, VAT
A couple of weeks ago, I used a story about a local tax issue in Washington, DC, to make an important point about how new tax increases cause more damage than previous tax increases because “deadweight losses” increase geometrically rather than arithmetically. Simply...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 17, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I recently wrote about the failed 1990 budget deal. My big complaint was that President George H.W. Bush compounded the mistake of higher taxes by also allowing a big increase in the burden of government spending. However, I didn’t blame the agreement for that year’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
I have a four-part video series on trade-related topics. Part I focused on the irrelevance of trade balances. Part II looked at specialization and comparative advantage. Here’s Part III, which explains how trade (whether domestic or international) leads to creative...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 14, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Since I’m a proponent of tax reform, I don’t like special favors in the tax code. Deductions, exemptions, credits, exclusions, and other preferences are back-door forms of cronyism and government intervention. Indeed, they basically exist to lure people into making...
