by Dan Mitchell | Dec 26, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
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...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 25, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
You have to give President Obama credit for chutzpah. He pushed through a faux stimulus in his first year and Obamacare in his second year, both of which significantly increased the burden of government spending. In the past two years, he’s basically punted, proposing...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 12, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Health Care, Welfare and Entitlements
This election season has seen lots of talk (and demagoguery) about whether investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners should be hit with class-warfare tax policy. And there’s also been lots of debate about the best way of averting bankruptcy for Medicare,...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 7, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Everyone has a cross to bear in life, some sort of burden or obligation, often self-imposed. For some inexplicable reason, I’ve decided that one of my responsibilities is to educate a backwards and primitive people who seem impervious to common sense, simple logic,...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 6, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
I wrote a celebratory post last November about the dramatic difference between Americans and Europeans. There truly is American exceptionalism in that Europeans are much more likely to think it is government’s responsibility to provide the basics of life. Another poll...