by Dan Mitchell | Nov 3, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
In 2008, government spending consumed 50.9 percent of economic output in Greece according to OECD fiscal data. That same year, Greece’s score from Economic Freedom of the World was 7.12 (on a 0-10 scale), which was rather poor for a supposedly developed country and...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 2, 2016 | Uncategorized
While the political world is consumed by the various scandals and baggage of the two main presidential candidates, let’s play a game of make-believe. Let’s pretend that politicians aren’t crooks and clowns and instead actually want to make America’s economy more...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 9, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
One of the great flaws of Keynesian economics is that proponents assume policymakers are angels motivated solely by a desire to help people by boosting the economy when there’s a downturn. Needless to say, that’s an absurd assumption. To cite just one real-world...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 29, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, VAT
I’m not the biggest fan of Paul Krugman in his role as a doctrinaire advocate of leftist policy (he used to be within the mainstream and occasionally point out the risks of government intervention in his former role as an academic economist). It’s not just that he...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 28, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
My buddy from grad school, Steve Horwitz, has a column for CapX that looks at the argument over “trickle-down economics.” As he points out (and as captured by the semi-clever nearby image), this is mostly a term used by leftists to imply that supporters of economic...