by Dan Mitchell | Dec 30, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, Trade
I periodically try to remind people that you can’t explain or understand economic performance by looking at just one policy. I’ve argued, for instance, good tax policy isn’t a panacea if there are many other policies that expand the burden of government. Likewise, bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 28, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
In this interview yesterday, I noted that there are “external” risks to the economy, most notably the spillover effect of a potential economic implosion in China or a fiscal crisis in Italy. But many of the risks are homegrown, such as Trump’s self-destructive...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 24, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I wrote a column earlier this month about the “world’s most depressing tweet,” which came from the Census Bureau and noted that the suburbs of Washington, DC, are the richest parts of America. To be sure, I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole since a tweet about...
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...
