There’s an old joke that if you owe a bank $10,000, you have a problem, but if you owe a bank $10,000,000, the bank has a problem. The Greek government certainly seems to have that attitude. Short-sighted and corrupt politicians in Athens have spent their nation into a fiscal ditch and they now want to […]

My blood pressure spiked after reading this story from the UK-based Times. The Greeks are rioting in the streets because they want our money (i.e., an IMF bailout) and they want to keep all the inefficient and wasteful government policies that caused the crisis. In other words, these bums and leeches want my fiscal burden […]

I get a lot of email asking me about Greece, especially since I don’t give the issue much attention on the blog. I am paying close attention to what’s happening, especially since Greece is a canary in the coal mine. But I generally try to avoid being repetitious, and anything I say now would replicate […]

The overall fiscal burden in the United States may be lower than it is in Europe, but there are some features of the internal revenue code that are far worse than what can be found on the other side of the Atlantic. America has a “worldwide” tax system, for instance, which means that our government […]

My life is now devoted to saving America from the European-style national sales tax known as the value-added tax. Writing in the New York Post, I explain that the impact of a VAT in Europe is bigger government, not smaller deficits: The real-world evidence shows that VATs are strongly linked with both higher overall tax […]

I don’t know what’s more laughable, the fact that some EU bureaucracy is creating an 80-minute poem (with dancing, no less), or that the “low-grade bank clerk” who masquerades as the European Council President is going to publish a a book of haiku poems. But only one item is objectionable, and that’s the latter since […]

Greece is in trouble for a combination of reasons. Government spending is far too excessive, diverting resources from more efficient uses. The bureaucracy is too large and paid too much, resulting in a misallocation of labor. And tax rates are too high, further hindering the productive sector of the economy. Europe’s political class wants to […]

Or maybe this belongs in the “great moments in international bureaucracy” series since it relates to European Union law. Regardless, we have another sign of Europe’s fiscal nightmare. A court in the United Kingdom has given a big green light to welfare tourism by ruling that a foreign citizen can get handouts based on children […]

Ireland may be in a recession (caused in large part by misguided housing subsidies), but there are two things worth admiring about the Emerald Isle’s public policy. Many wonks already know about the first policy, the 12.5 percent corporate tax rate that helped transform Ireland from the “sick man of Europe.” But it seems that Irish […]

Greece’s fiscal disarray is a visible manifestation of Europe’s future, but the most appropriate symbol of what’s wrong with the continent comes from Brussels, where there are three “presidents” fighting over the right to represent Europe at international gatherings. The contestants include the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council, and […]