by Dan Mitchell | Nov 29, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
The central argument against punitive taxation is that it leads to less economic activity. Here’s a visual from an excellent video tutorial by Professor Alex Tabarrok. It shows that government grabs a share of private output when a tax is imposed, thus reducing the...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 26, 2018 | Blogs, Economics
During his final days in office, I gave a thumbs-down assessment of Barack Obama’s presidency. Simply stated, he increased the burden of government during his tenure, and that led to anemic economic numbers. Now the economy seems to be doing a bit better, which is...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 23, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care
While I have no objection to applauding Donald Trump’s good policies such as tax reform and deregulation, I also don’t hesitate to criticize his bad policies. His big missteps are protectionism and fiscal profligacy, but he also does small things that are misguided....
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 20, 2018 | Blogs, Economic Growth, Economics
I generally don’t write much about the distribution of income (most-recent example from 2017), largely because that feeds into the false notion that the economy is a fixed pie and that politicians should have the power to re-slice if they think incomes aren’t...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 16, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I periodically ask my left-leaning friends to identify a nation that became rich with statist policies. They usually point to Sweden or Denmark, but I point out that Sweden and Denmark became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s, when government was very small. At that...
