by Dan Mitchell | Jul 9, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending
The European Commission’s data-gathering bureaucracy, Eurostat, has just published a new report on government finances for the region. And with Greece’s ongoing fiscal turmoil getting headlines, this Eurostat publication is worthwhile because it debunks the notion,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 7, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When I make speeches about fiscal policy, I oftentimes share a table showing the many nations that have made big progress by enforcing spending restraint over multi-year periods. I then ask audiences a rhetorical question about a possible list of nations that have...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 3, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Back in 2010, I described the “Butterfield Effect,” which is a term used to mock clueless journalists for being blind to the real story. A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 20, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation, Welfare and Entitlements
Last September, I wrote about some very disturbing 10-year projections that showed a rising burden of government spending. Those numbers were rather depressing, but a recently released long-term forecast from the Congressional Budget Office make the 10-year numbers...
by Dan Mitchell | May 27, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
Over the years, I’ve had many arguments about economic policy with my statist friends. I put them into three categories. The completely unreasonable statists blindly assert, notwithstanding all the evidence around the world, that bigger government and more...
