by Dan Mitchell | Mar 28, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care
I spoke yesterday to the Memphis Economics Club about America’s looming fiscal crisis, and I did my usual song-and-dance routine about potential Greek-style chaos in the absence of genuine entitlement reform. But I confess I was stumped when, after the speech, someone...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 10, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Over the years, I’ve shared many charts, graphs, and tables to help people understand that the welfare state is fundamentally unsustainable. And, assuming there’s not genuine entitlement reform, many of these fiscal estimates show that the United States has a very...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 30, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Self awareness is supposed to be a good thing, so I’m going to openly acknowledge that I have an unusual fixation on the size of government. I don’t lose a wink of sleep thinking about deficits, but I toss and turn all night fretting about the overall burden of...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 8, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
I’ve shared many charts over the years, but two of the most compelling ones deal with poverty. The numbers in this chart, which are based on Census Bureau data and scholarly studies (see here, here, here, and here), show that the poverty rate was steadily...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 4, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs
America desperately needs genuine entitlement reform to avoid a Greek-style fiscal future. The biggest problems are the health entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, but Social Security also has a huge long-run fiscal shortfall. That’s why I’m a big...
