by Dan Mitchell | Feb 18, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
According to a “Happy Planet” index put together by some leftists a few years ago, Venezuela is supposed to be one of the world’s best nations. But I strongly suspect that the vast majority of these people would be horrified if they actually had to live there. That’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 17, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Taxation
I’m in Hong Kong for series of meeting and briefings on various economic and policy issues. As you can imagine, I’m a huge fan of the jurisdiction’s simple 15 percent flat tax. It’s basically about as close to a pure flat tax as anyplace in the world. There is...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 15, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, VAT
This is a very strange political season. Some of the Senators running for the Republican presidential nomination are among the most principled advocates of smaller government in Washington. Yet all of them have proposed tax plans that, while theoretically far better...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 11, 2016 | Blogs, Economics
The quality of economic analysis from politicians is never good, but it becomes even worse during election season. The class-warfare rhetoric being spewed by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is profoundly anti-empirical. Our leftist friends genuinely seem to think...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 8, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Welfare and Entitlements
Taxpayers don’t like coughing up big amounts of money so other people can choose not to work. And they really get upset when welfare payments are so generous that newcomers are encouraged to climb in the wagon of government dependency. This has an effect on the...
