by Dan Mitchell | Nov 18, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Notwithstanding the landslide rejection of Obama and his policies in the mid-term election, I don’t think this will produce big changes in policy over the next two years. Simply stated, the GOP does not have the votes to override presidential vetoes, so there’s no...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 16, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Laffer Curve, Taxation
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) are congressional bureaucracies that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill because of their role as fiscal scorekeepers and referees. Unfortunately, these bureaucracies lean to the left. When...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 13, 2014 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I don’t pretend that tax reform, by itself, will create economic Nirvana. After all, the experts who measure economic policy and economic performance say that only about 20 percent of a nation’s prosperity is determined by fiscal policy. Nonetheless, I’m a big fan of...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I’ve argued that we’ll get better government if we make it smaller. And Mark Steyn humorously observed, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.” But can these assertions be quantified? I had an email...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 2, 2014 | Blogs, Capital Gains, Taxation
According to the bean counters at Ernst and Young, the United States has one of the highest capital gains tax rates in the world. But if you don’t trust the numbers from a big accounting firm, then you can peruse a study from the pro-tax Organization for Economic...
