by Dan Mitchell | Jan 23, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Monetary Policy
Everyone, it seems, is worried about global economic stagnation. And there is good reason to be concerned. Europe is in the doldrums. Japan is stagnant. The developing world is hampered by intervention, corruption, and absence of property rights. And the United States...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 22, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
There’s a famous quote, commonly attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, about the American character. America is great because America is good. If America ever stops being good, it will stop being great. What makes this quote so popular (even though Wikipedia says it’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 21, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
Watching politicians give speeches, such as Obama’s State of the Union address, is an occupational hazard when you work at a think tank. Which is why, in the past, I’ve heartily recommended the State-of-the-Union Bingo game developed by Americans for Tax Reform....
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 20, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
The most compelling graph I’ve ever seen was put together by Andrew Coulson at the Cato Institute. It shows that there’s been a huge increase in the size and cost of the government education bureaucracy in recent decades, but that student performance has been...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 17, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Welfare and Entitlements
In my younger years, I oftentimes would have arguments with statists who wanted me to believe that countries in Northern Europe like Sweden “proved” that generous welfare states were compatible with economic prosperity. That doesn’t happen as often today because the...
