Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity” presumably means cutting back on wasteful government spending. Obama’s definition of “stimulus,” by […]

It’s been amusing, in an I-told-you-so fashion, to follow the fiscal crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states. And I feel like a voyeuristic ghoul as I observe the incredibly misguided bailout policies being adopted by the political elites (who are trying to bailout the business elites who made silly loans to corrupt nations […]

American taxpayers are not the only ones getting ripped off by lavish pay and perks for bureaucrats. The Daily Mail reports on a new study about public sector pay in the United Kingdom: Public sector employees work nine years less than their private sector counterparts but are paid 30 per cent more, a bombshell report […]

I don’t often agree with the statist president of the European Commission, but Mr. Barroso may be right when he warns that some nations are at risk of descending back into dictatorship. But while he may be correct in his diagnosis, his proposed solution is more of the policies – redistribution, handounts, bailouts, and subsidies […]

The former communists running Russia apparently understand tax policy better than the buffoons in charge of U.S. tax policy. Not only does Russia have a 13 percent flat tax, but the government has just announced it will eliminate the capital gains tax (which shouldn’t exist in a pure flat tax anyhow). Here’s a passage from […]

President Andrew Jackson is believed to have said that “One man with courage makes a majority.” Well, let’s hope this statement also applies to women. The incoming Prime Minister of Slovakia, Ms. Iveta Radicova, has the power to stop the corrupt and misguided European bailout scheme. At one point, Irish voters had the power to stop […]

I hope the title to this blog post is completely wrong, but the news out of Europe is very grim. Politicians have been over-spending and going deeper and deeper into debt. This negatively affects the private sector in the usual ways (higher taxes, unproductive allocation of resources, etc), but also creates instability in the financial […]

CNBC is reporting that 51 German millionaires and billionaires have endorsed the idea of that rich people should have to give an extra 10 percent of their income to the government. I’m tempted to dismiss this story since (according to my rudimentary math skills) these clowns represent only 6/1000th of 1 percent of all wealthy […]

This story from Business Week warmed my heart. Switzerland’s cantons are competing to create better tax policy, and this is attracting companies seeking to escape the kleptocracies elsewhere in Europe. This shows the value of tax competition (imagine how bad taxes would be in Germany and France if politicians in those nations didn’t have to […]

The Secretary of the Treasury is a comedian as well as a tax cheat. At least that’s the only rational interpretation of his recent statements in Europe, where he used the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do routine while pretending to tell the Europeans to be fiscally responsible. The Wall Street Journal, in keeping with the deadpan style of the […]