by Dan Mitchell | Aug 25, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Regulations
This century has not been good news for economic liberty in the United States. According to Economic Freedom of the World, America has dropped from being the 3rd-freest economy of the world in 2001 to the 12th-freest economy in themost recent rankings. Perhaps more...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 23, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
What’s the biggest economic fallacy on the left? What’s the defining mistake for our statist friends? One obvious answer is that many of them hold the anti-empirical belief that the economy is a fixed pie and that one person can’t climb the economic ladder unless...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 19, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’m a huge fan of the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World. I always share the annual rankings when they’re released and I routinely cite EFW measures when writing about individual countries. But even a wonky economist like me realizes that there is more...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 18, 2015 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
The United States has what is arguably the worst business tax system of any nation. That’s bad for the shareholders who own companies, and it’s also bad for workers and consumers. And it creates such a competitive disadvantagethat many U.S.-domiciled companies are...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 16, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Defenders of Social Security often make a point of stating that the retirement system is a form of “social insurance” because people become eligible for benefits by paying into the system. Welfare programs, by contrast, give money to people simply as a form of income...