by Dan Mitchell | Oct 11, 2015 | Uncategorized
If you look at oil-rich jurisdictions around the world, it’s easy to see why experts sometimes write about the “resource curse.” Simply stated, governments don’t have much incentive to be responsible when they can use oil as a seemingly endless source of tax revenue....
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 10, 2015 | Uncategorized
I’m happy that many of the presidential candidates are proposing big tax cuts. Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump have large tax cuts, and Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio are proposing smaller – but still significant – reductions in the federal tax burden. All of...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 2, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs
What’s worse, Democrats who deliberately seek to make government bigger because of their ideological belief in statism, or Republicans who sort of realize that big government is bad yet make government bigger because of incompetence? I’m not sure, though this is a...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 1, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
I’m pleasantly surprised by the tax plans proposed by Marco Rubio, Rand Paul,Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump. In varying ways, all these candidate have put forth relatively detailed proposals that address high tax rates, punitive double taxation, and distorting tax...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 30, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Perhaps the least recognized and least appreciated triumph of the GOP Congress is the de facto spending freeze between 2009 and 2014. Fights over debt limits, sequestration,spending caps, and government shutdowns were messy and chaotic, but it’s hard to argue with the...