by Dan Mitchell | Jul 20, 2014 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
When people in other nations ask me for evidence in favor of low taxes, I often will ask them to compare the economic performance of a high-tax nation like France with the performance of a nation such as Switzerland with less onerous taxes. If I’m asked by Americans,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 12, 2014 | Blogs, Economics
Why do statists make so many mistakes with data? Paul Krugman, for instance, has butchered numbers when writing about fiscal policy in nations such as France, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. But Krugman isn’t alone. We also have Thomas Piketty, who was...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 11, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending
Libertarians tend to like – or at least have a grudging respect for – the underground economy. For instance, even if we’re personally very straight-laced, we don’t like government prohibitions against gambling, drugs, and prostitution. This is why we’re not upset when...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 8, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’ve shared lots of data and evidence about the harmful economic impact of government spending. Simply stated, budgetary outlays divert resources from more productive uses.And this results in labor and capital being misallocated, leading to less economic output....
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 6, 2014 | Blogs, Economics, Financial Privacy, Tax Competition, Taxation
I’ve argued that subsidies for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are the most destructively wasteful outlays in the federal budget. At least on a per-dollar-spent basis. But what if we did the same exercise on the tax side of...
