It’s hard to imagine how we would get through life without necessities like bacon and duct tape. But have you ever thought about how the free market gives you so much for so little? Here’s a video that should be mandatory viewing in Washington. Too bad politicians didn’t watch it before imposing government-run healthcare. And […]

I’m not a big fan of the rating agencies. I’ve warned in TV interviews that they generally wait too long before downgrading profligate governments. So when the rating agencies finally catch up to everyone else and lower their outlook for failing welfare states such as Greece and Portugal, one would think that this would be […]

The big-government advocates at the Center for American Progress recently released a series of charts designed to prove America is a low-tax nation. I wish this was the case. The United States does have a lower overall tax burden than Europe, which is shown in one of the CAP charts, but that doesn’t exactly demonstrate […]

The notion that American taxpayers are about to subsidize another Greek bailout (via the Keystone Cops at the IMF) is way beyond economically foolish. It is also morally offensive. To turn Winston Churchill’s famous quote upside down: “Never have so many paid so much to subsidize such an undeserving few.” Let’s start with a few […]

I’ve explained before that one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Obamanomics is that the economy is suffering from sub-par growth, something that is particularly damning since normally one expects to see faster-than-average growth following an economic downturn. In a recent presentation, Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago included a couple of […]

All I can say is that I’m thankful the United States is not part of the European Union, at least if this little tidbit from the UK-based Telegraph is true. American politicians waste a lot of money, but even I doubt they ever spent tax dollars on something that is simultaneously so idiotic and so […]

eronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has a very good – but somewhat depressing – analysis of the fiscal crisis in Greece. She basically concludes that bailouts will continue because nobody in Europe is willing to do the right thing. This got me thinking about what I expect to happen. Here are the options, […]

One of the biggest threats against global prosperity is the anti-tax competition project of a Paris-based international bureaucracy known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, acting at the behest of the European welfare states that dominate its membership, wants the power to tell nations (including the United States!) what is acceptable […]

I’m on the Crimean Peninsula for a meeting of the European Resource Bank. It’s my first trip to Ukraine, and the conference is being held at a hotel on the Black Sea, so I can’t complain about the scenery. But the news from the various European think tanks is generally not favorable. Marcin Nowacki of […]

Yesterday, I took aim at a truly pathetic human being who lives as an “adult baby.” But what got me upset was not his lifestyle, but rather the fact that he was mooching off the taxpayers thanks to the dumb bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration, who granted him “disability’ status, which means he gets […]