The Kansas Tax Cuts Are Working, and That’s Why Statists Are Worried

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 12, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, States, Tax Competition, Taxation

I was in Montreal last week for a conference on tax competition, where I participated in a debate about whether the corporate income tax should be abolished with my crazy left-wing friend Richard Murphy. But I don’t want to write about that debate, both because I was...

Even the OECD Now Admits Spending Caps Are the only Effective Way of Restraining Government

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending

I’m not a big fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That international bureaucracy is controlled by high-tax nations that want to export bad policy to the rest of the world. As such, the OECD frequently advocates policies that...

Debunking Fiscal Myths: There Is No Loophole for “Carried Interest”

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 10, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation

I’m a big fan of the flat tax because a low tax rate and no double taxation will result in faster growth and more upward mobility. I also like the flat tax because it gets rid of all deductions, credits, exemptions, preferences, exclusions, and other distortions.And a...

If We Want Prosperity, Prices Should Be Determined by Markets Rather than Politicians

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 7, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market

The communist economic system was a total disaster, but it wasn’t because of excessive taxation. Communist countries generally didn’t even have tax systems. The real problem was that communism was based on central planning, which is the notion that supposedly wise...

Comparing the United States and Nordic Nations: Is American “Inequality” Bad if It Simply Means Some People Get Richer Faster than other People Get Richer?

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 2, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics

I’ve already commented several times on the good and bad features of the Nordic Model, largely to correct the false narrative being advanced by Bernie Sanders (though I was writing on this issue well before the Vermont Senator decided to run for Chief Commissar...