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...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 6, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Whenever there’s a fight over raising the debt limit, the political establishment gets hysterical and makes apocalyptic claims about default and economic crisis. For years, I’ve been arguing that this Chicken-Little rhetoric is absurd. And earlier this week I...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 2, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
The Index of Economic Freedom, my favorite Heritage Foundation publication, wasreleased today. As one might predict, Hong Kong once again ranks as the jurisdiction with the most liberty to engage in mutually beneficial exchange, followed by Singapore. Other highly...
