by Dan Mitchell | Feb 11, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 7, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white? Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 6, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
People often ask why I put so much political humor on this site. The easy answer is that I like a good joke. But I also find that some cartoons and jokes do a very good job of helping people understand economics. I’ve always liked this cartoon, for instance, because...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 3, 2012 | Blogs, Economics
The new unemployment numbers show a joblessness rate of 8.3 percent. From a political perspective, this is good news for the White House. Even though the Obama Administration projected that the unemployment rate today would be about 2-percentage points lower if the...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 2, 2012 | Blogs, Economic Growth, Economics
On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website. Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s. But perhaps that was an unfair...
