by Dan Mitchell | Dec 4, 2017 | Blogs, Economics
The late Mancur Olsen was a very accomplished academic economist who described the unfortunate tendency of vote-seeking governments to behave like “stationary bandits,” seeking to extract the maximum amount of money from taxpayers. I’m not nearly as sophisticated, so...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 3, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
As part of yesterday’s column about the comparatively tiny – and temporary – tax cut in the Republican tax reform plan, I quoted a leftist columnist for US News & World Report, who argued that there should be a big tax increase (including a big tax hike on...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 1, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
One of my specialty pages deals with the unfortunate nexus between sex and government. You can find columns about taxes and sex, Obamacare and sex, and licensing and sex. My new addition to that collection involves the venal government of Venezuela. Here’s a...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 29, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I have a fantasy of junking the entire corrupt tax system and adopting a simple and fair flat tax. I have an even bigger fantasy of shrinking the size and scope of the federal government to what America’s Founders intended, in which case...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 28, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I’ve been grousing all year that tax cuts and tax reform are jeopardized by the failure to restrain the growth of federal spending. At the start of the year, I pointed out that it would be possible to both balance the budget and approve a $3 trillion tax...
