by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’m in Brussels, where I’m participating in an “Economic Freedom Summit” on the unfriendly turf of the European Parliament. My role was to chair a panel earlier today about whether Venezuela can recover from socialism. I obviously have an opinion on that topic, but I...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 8, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
There is a lot of good news about the job market in America. The official unemployment rate, released just yesterday, is down to 4.1 percent, which is the lowest its been since the end of the Clinton years. Even more impressive, the number of people getting...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 4, 2018 | Blogs, Economics
I explained last month that the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution mechanism is the best way of discouraging China from short-sighted mercantilist and cronyist trade policies. The Trump Administration, though, thinks that the best response to bad Chinese...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 30, 2018 | Blogs, Economics
What’s the best argument against statism? As a libertarian, my answer is that freedom is preferable to coercion. Freedom also ranks higher than prosperity. For instance, the government might be able to boost economic output by requiring people to work seven days a...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 27, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Regulations
Let’s look at some absurd examples of the regulatory state in action. We’ll start with bone-headed pizza regulation, as explained by the Wall Street Journal. FDA released guidance for posting calorie disclosures at restaurants with more than 20 locations, and the...