Just like in the United States, politicians in the United Kingdom use the deceptive practice of “baseline budgeting” as part of fiscal policy. This means the politicians can increase spending, but simultaneously claim they are cutting spending because the budget could have expanded at an even faster pace. Sort of like saying your diet is […]

Back in 2011, I linked to a simple chart that illustrated how handouts and subsidies create very high implicit marginal tax rates for low-income people and explained how “generosity” from the government leads to a tar-paper effect that limits upward mobility. Earlier this year, I shared an amazing chart that specifically measured how the welfare […]

Obama’s main goal in the fiscal cliff negotiations is to impose a class-warfare tax hike. He presumably thinks this will give the government more money to spend, but recent evidence from the United Kingdom suggests that he won’t get nearly as much money as he thinks. Why? Because there’s this thing called the Laffer Curve. […]

I’m not easily grossed out or nauseated. Heck, I’m on email lists for a half-dozen softball teams and you can only imagine the strange/filthy/nasty things that guys send to each other. But I read a story about the death panels in the United Kingdom that left me discombobulated. I can’t even begin to describe how […]

I’m in Jersey, where I gave a speech last night. But not New Jersey, the state where you shouldn’t die. That’s the state that many people have been fleeing because they don’t like paying confiscatory taxes to finance bureaucrats who make as much as $320,000 per year. Instead, I’m in the Bailiwick of Jersey, which […]

I used to think I was in favor of every possible step to reduce the burden of government spending. Are agricultural subsidies wasteful and corrupt? Yes, so get rid of the Department of Agriculture. Is Medicaid spending out of control? Yes, so cap outlay growth and block grant the program to the states. Has NATO […]

I’m not a fan of the American healthcare system. It suffers from huge inefficiencies because of problems such as third-party payer, which is caused by government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid along with a system of tax code-driven over-insurance in the supposedly private sector. But regardless of how much I grouse about the damage […]

If you live in America and believe in free markets and small government, it’s easy to get depressed. We suffered through eight years of wasteful spending and misguided intervention under Bush, and now we’re enduring four years of additional spending and red tape under Obama. Moreover, it’s not clear things will get any better in […]

I wrote last week about David Gauke, a simpering and unctuous statist who said it was “morally wrong” for people to pay cash for services because that made it harder for the state to seize a share of the proceeds. And last month I condemned the country’s CINO (Conservative in Name Only) Prime Minister for […]

Back in 2010, I excoriated the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, noting that David Cameron was increasing tax rates and expanding the burden of government spending (including an increase in the capital gains tax!). I also criticized Cameron for leaving in place the 50 percent income tax rate imposed by his feckless predecessor, […]