by Dan Mitchell | Sep 29, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I haven’t written much about the budget fights over a government shutdown, Obamacare, the continuing resolution, and the debt limit for the simple reason that the battles are mostly about politics and strategy rather than policy. At the risk of oversimplifying, here’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 22, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care, Welfare and Entitlements
One of the challenges of good entitlement reform (or even bad entitlement reform) is that recipients think they’ve “earned” benefits. If you tell them that programs such as Medicare are unsustainable and need to be changed, some of them suspect you’re trying to...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 8, 2013 | Blogs, Economics
Most Western nations have huge long-run fiscal problems because of unfavorable demographics and misguided entitlement programs. That’s the bad news. The good news is that dozens of nations have fully or partially shifted to mandatory private savings as a pro-growth...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 3, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States has a terrible long-run fiscal outlook. Assuming we don’t implement genuine entitlement reform, the only countries in worse shape are the United Kingdom and Japan. The Organization for Economic...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 14, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
I’ve done a handful of TV debates on Social Security, including the time I said that I wished Republicans had a secret plan for personal retirement accounts. So I thought I was well prepared for this duel with a defender of the status quo on Fox Business Network. I...