by Dan Mitchell | Jul 29, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
I’m still in China, as part of a week-long teaching assignment about markets, entrepreneurship, economics, and fiscal policy at Northeastern University in Shenyang. One point that I’ve tried to get across to the students is that China should not copy the United...
by Dan Mitchell | May 28, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’m in Marrakech where I just spoke about the importance of economic freedom and entrepreneurship. To close out my presentation, I zipped through several slides showing how nations with pro-market policies enjoy faster long-run growth than countries burdened by...
by Dan Mitchell | May 20, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
From a leftist perspective, making lots of money is not necessarily a bad thing. Rich Hollywood celebrities almost always get a free pass, especially if they embrace statist beliefs. The crowd in Silicon Valley also is generally forgiven for being rich, perhaps...
by Dan Mitchell | May 9, 2016 | Blogs, Economics
From an economic perspective, too much government spending is harmful to economic performance because politicians and bureaucrats don’t have very good incentives to spend money wisely. More specifically, labor and capital will be misallocated because people in...
by Dan Mitchell | May 5, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
One of the more interesting policy debates, both in America and around the world, is whether convoluted and counterproductive welfare states should be scrapped and replaced with a “basic income” payment from the government. Finland is experimenting with the concept....