by Dan Mitchell | Jul 28, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Shortly after the fiscal crisis began in Greece, I explained that the country got in trouble because of too much government spending. More specifically, I pointed out that the country was violating my Golden Rule, which meant that the burden of spending was rising...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 15, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
If you did man-on-the-street interviews across America and asked people about Social Security, I suspect most of them would have some degree of understanding about the program’s looming fiscal crisis. Since they’re not policy wonks, they presumably wouldn’t know the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 28, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
I wrote yesterday about the continuing success of Switzerland’s spending cap. Before voters changed the Swiss constitution, overall expenditures were growing by an average of 4.6 percent annually. Ever since the “debt brake” took effect, though, government spending...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 9, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I’ve half-joked in the past that spending restraint is the answer to every fiscal problem. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the right answer to 98 percent of fiscal problems. Some fiscal discipline is what we need in America, for instance, and it’s certainly an...
by Dan Mitchell | May 20, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
As a general rule, we worry too much about deficits and debt. Yes, red ink matters, but we should pay more attention to variables such as the overall burden of government spending and the structure of the tax system. That being said, Greece shows that a nation can...
