by Dan Mitchell | Nov 10, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
A couple of days ago, I wrote about Clemens Schneider’s hypothesis, presented at the European Students for Liberty regional conference in Maastricht, that 1356 was a very important year in European history because of two events that promoted decentralization and...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 3, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
In 2008, government spending consumed 50.9 percent of economic output in Greece according to OECD fiscal data. That same year, Greece’s score from Economic Freedom of the World was 7.12 (on a 0-10 scale), which was rather poor for a supposedly developed country and...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 2, 2016 | Uncategorized
While the political world is consumed by the various scandals and baggage of the two main presidential candidates, let’s play a game of make-believe. Let’s pretend that politicians aren’t crooks and clowns and instead actually want to make America’s economy more...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 15, 2016 | Blogs, Taxation
A couple of days ago, I wrote about the new rankings from the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report and noted that America’s private sector is considered world class but that our public sector ranks poorly compared to many other developed nations. To...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 3, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
If nothing else, Belgian politicians deserve credit for perseverance. One year ago, the nation was considering a “tax shift” that would reduce taxes on labor and increase taxes on consumption. I pointed out that this didn’t make much sense since it wouldn’t alter the...