by Dan Mitchell | May 2, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Just a few months ago, I wrote about Germany’s fiscal decay. Over the past eight years, government spending has grown much faster than the private sector, thus violating the Golden Rule of fiscal policy. Given the shift to bad policy in Germany, I...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 19, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
Three years ago, I wrote about the erosion of economic liberty in Western Europe (specifically, the 15 nations that comprised the European Union between 1995-2004). Sadly, here’s a more up-to-date chart showing that the loss of economic...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 18, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I’ve periodically tried to explain that even small differences in long-run growth can lead to immense benefits, including huge reductions in poverty. To illustrate the importance of higher growth rates, I sometimes inform audiences that...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 17, 2024 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
Five years ago, I shared this video explaining why trade deficits generally don’t matter. The most important thing to understand is that a trade deficit is the same thing as a financial account surplus (formerly known as a capital surplus), which is easy to...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 12, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Since this is my last full day in Sweden, I want to build upon my previous two columns (on long-run tax policy and pandemic spending policy). We’ll start with this video explaining that Sweden is not socialist. Johan Norberg is correct. Sweden does not...