Eight Charts to Understand the Federal Budget Mess

by Dan Mitchell | Apr 21, 2026 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation

Fiscal policy is fairly straightforward if you’re a libertarian. In almost all cases, you want lower taxes and smaller government. It’s also simple if you’re a constitutionalist. You just look a Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and anything...

Trump’s Head-in-the-Sand Approach to America’s Looming Entitlement Crisis

by Dan Mitchell | Apr 6, 2026 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements

Thanks to demographic change and poorly designed entitlement programs (primarily Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but also food stamps and other welfare programs), the United States is stumbling toward a grim fiscal future. Let’s...

America’s Future Inflation Crisis?

by Dan Mitchell | Feb 15, 2026 | Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements

Let’s start today’s column with two simple and uncontroversial statements. Without real entitlement reform, the burden of government spending will grow dramatically over the next few decades. There are only three ways – taxes, borrowing, and money-printing – to...

The World’s Biggest Economic Problem

by Dan Mitchell | Jan 16, 2026 | Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements

While I periodically disagree with some of the magazine’s analysis (see here, here, and here), I enjoy perusing the Economist because it covers issues I care about. A recent headline in the U.K.-based publication caught my attention. The...

Demographic Decline, Part II: America’s Unaffordable Young-to-Old Welfare State

by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2025 | Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements

In Part I of this series, I explained that modern welfare states are in deep trouble because of falling birth rates. The core of the problem is that entitlement programs generally tax young people to subsidize old people. And fewer babies today means fewer workers...