by Dan Mitchell | Apr 18, 2011 | Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
Economists often do a crummy job of teaching people about the impact of fiscal policy on the labor force, largely because we put people to sleep with boring discussions about “labor supply” decisions (my blog post from last year perhaps being an example of this...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 17, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Taxation
Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous compliance costs of the internal revenue code. Narrated by Hiwa Alaghebandian of the American Enterprise...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 15, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
By taking advantage of “must-pass” pieces of legislation, Republicans have three chances this year to restrain the burden of government. They didn’t do very well with the ‘CR fight” over appropriated spending for the rest of FY2011, which was their first...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 14, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Taxation
President Obama didn’t offer a budget plan yesterday. The White House hasn’t released anything beyond a set of talking points. But that’s not terribly surprising since his speech was really the opening salvo of his 2012 reelection fight. And it’s clear that a central...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 13, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Responding to widespread criticism of his AWOL status on the budget fight, President Obama today unveiled a fiscal plan. It already is being criticized for its class warfare approach to tax policy, but the most disturbing feature may be a provision that punishes the...