Tag Archives : Economics
Why Won’t Washington Understand that Paying People to Be Unemployed Means More Unemployment?
I’ve written periodically about the perverse incentives of the unemployment insurance system. Simply stated, there will be fewer jobs if the government subsidizes joblessness, and I even showed that this is a consensus position by citing the academic writings of left-leaning economists such as Larry Summers and Paul Krugman. The San Francisco Federal Reserve also […]
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Sex and the Power of Economics
Even though there is a wealth of evidence for the Laffer Curve, statists and other big-government advocates routinely claim that incentives don’t matter. So I wonder how they’ll react to this new research showing that incentives have an impact on sexual choices. Here are some blurbs from The Economist. …if you are a poor African […]
read more...How Can Obama Look at these Two Charts and Conclude that America Should Have Higher Double Taxation of Dividends and Capital Gains?
As discussed yesterday, the most important number in Obama’s budget is that the burden of government spending will be at least $2 trillion higher in 10 years if the President’s plan is enacted. But there are also some very unsightly warts in the revenue portion of the President’s budget. Americans for Tax Reform has a […]
read more...Data in New World Bank Report Shows that Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly […]
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Acting as the Typhoid Mary of the Global Economy, the OECD Urges Higher Taxes in Latin America
Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white? Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to figure out why any organization – even a leftist bureaucracy such […]
read more...Classic Cartoon on So-Called Stimulus Is Amusing and Economically Accurate
People often ask why I put so much political humor on this site. The easy answer is that I like a good joke. But I also find that some cartoons and jokes do a very good job of helping people understand economics. I’ve always liked this cartoon, for instance, because it cleverly illustrates the impact […]
read more...In a Victory for Gridlock, the Unemployment Rate Has Dropped 1.5-Percentage Points Since Republicans Took Control of the House
The new unemployment numbers show a joblessness rate of 8.3 percent. From a political perspective, this is good news for the White House. Even though the Obama Administration projected that the unemployment rate today would be about 2-percentage points lower if the so-called stimulus was adopted, most people aren’t looking at the numbers analytically. Instead, […]
read more...One Year Later, Another Look at Obamanomics vs. Reaganomics
On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website. Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s. But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit […]
read more...Debating at U.S. News & World Report, I Explain Double Taxation to the Economic Heathens
Never let it be said I back down from a fight, even when it’s the other team’s game, played by the other team’s rules, and for the benefit of the wrong person. And that definitely went through my mind when U.S. News & World Report asked me to contribute to their “Debate Club” on the […]
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Dan Mitchell’s State-of-the-Union Tax Analysis
I’ve already posted the Cato Institute’s overnight response to the President’s state-of-the-Union speech. Here’s the Dan Mitchell pre-SOTU speech to congressional staffers. I’ve already had people ask me for the charts I used in the speech. Here’s the double taxation chart. Here’s the tax complexity chart. Here’s the data on the Laffer Curve in the […]
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