After Reviewing the Federal Reserve’s Lousy Track Record, Thomas Sowell Asks Why such a Deeply Flawed Institution Should Be Allowed to Accumulate more Power

by Dan Mitchell | Feb 9, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics

When speaking about the difference between the private sector and the government, I sometimes emphasize that mistakes and errors are inevitable, and that the propensity to screw up may be just as prevalent in the private sector as it is in the public sector. I...

From Employment to Savings, Bad Government Policy Is Undermining the U.S. Economy

by Dan Mitchell | Feb 4, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics

First, some good news. The United States is in much better shape than most other developed nations, particularly if you look at broad measures of prosperity and living standards. And our economy is growing and the private sector is creating jobs. That’s the...

In a Continuing Indictment of Obamanomics, another Bad Jobs Number Showing the “New Normal” of High Unemployment

by Dan Mitchell | Feb 2, 2013 | Blogs, Economics

I almost feel sorry for the Obama Administration’s spin doctors. Every month, they probably wait for the unemployment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics with the same level of excitement that people on death row wait for their execution date. This has been...

Rather than Helping the Poor, Higher Tax Rates Redistribute Rich People

by Dan Mitchell | Feb 1, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation

Daniel Hannan is a member of the European Parliament from England. He is one of the few economically sensible people in that body, as demonstrated in these short clips of him speaking about tax competition and deriding the European Commission’s corrupt racket. And as...

Why GDP Data Shouldn’t Be Interpreted in Ways That Support Keynesian Spending

by Dan Mitchell | Jan 31, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian

Fighting against statism in Washington is a lot like trying to swim upstream. It seems that everything (how to measure spending cuts, how to estimate tax revenue, etc) is rigged to make your job harder. A timely example is the way the way government puts together data...