by Dan Mitchell | May 13, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 12, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
I’ve written many times about how investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners and other successful people migrate from high-tax states to low-tax states. Well, the same thing happens internationally, as France’s greedy politicians are now learning. It’s a lot...
by Dan Mitchell | May 7, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’ve written before about the remarkable vitality of Hong Kong and Singapore, two jurisdictions that deserve praise for small government and free markets. I have also praised Switzerland because of policies such as genuine federalism and financial privacy, and it goes...
by Dan Mitchell | May 6, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 2, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Keynesian
President Bush imposed a so-called stimulus plan in 2008 and President Obama imposed an even bigger “stimulus” in 2009. Based upon the economy’s performance over the past five-plus years, those plans didn’t work. Japan has spent the past 20-plus years imposing one...