by Dan Mitchell | Oct 15, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Politicians can interfere with the laws of supply and demand (and they do, with distressing regularity), but they can’t repeal them. The minimum wage issue is a tragic example. If lawmakers pass a law mandating wages of $10 per hour, that is going to have a very bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 14, 2018 | Blogs, Economics
I periodically explain that you generally don’t get a recession by hiking taxes, adding red tape, or increasing the burden of government spending. Those policies are misguided, to be sure, but they mostly erode the economy’s long-run potential growth. If you want to...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 12, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
One of the more elementary observations about economics is that a nation’s prosperity is determined in part by the quantity of quality of labor and capital. These “factors of production” are combined to generate national income. I frequently grouse that punitive tax...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 7, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I explained last year that there is an inverse relationship between government efficiency and the size of government. And Mark Steyn made the same point, using humor, back in 2012. Interestingly, we have some unexpected allies. In a recently released study, two...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 2, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Health Care
Back in 2012, I shared a chart showing that workplace deaths declined substantially after the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But I then shared a second chart showing that workplace deaths declined just as much before OSHA was created....
