by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I’ve been critical of Trump’s record on government spending, particularly with regards to entitlements. But perhaps he’ll be better in his second term and there is a positive sign in his just-released budget for discretionary...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 29, 2025 | Blogs, Taxation
Basic economy theory, depicted by supply-and-demand curves, tells us that taxes will cause “deadweight loss.” This is the economic activity that no longer occurs because taxes creates a wedge between buyers and sellers. And this analysis applies whether...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 23, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
In the past seven months, I’ve used my 20th Theorem of Government to analyze three countries (France, Brazil, Colombia) and two states (Maryland, Washington). All of those case studies were examples of “fiscal deterioration,” which occurs when politicians...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 21, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
In 2020, I crunched numbers from OMB’s Historical Tables to rank the fiscal performance of nine recent presidents, going all the way back to LBJ. I was especially interested to see which presidents did best and worst when looking on overall...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 16, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Time for another edition of my series on “Fiscal Fights with Friends,” where I debunk supposed conservatives who advocate for statist policies. Today’s topic is tax increases, an issue that I’ve had to address before (examples can be found here, here,...
