by Dan Mitchell | Sep 4, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Tax Competition, Taxation
I recently speculated whether Detroit’s fiscal problems should be a warning sign for the crowd in Washington. The answer, of course, is yes, though it’s not a perfect analogy. The federal government is in deep trouble because of unsustainable entitlement programs...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 29, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I got involved in a bit of a controversy last year about presidential profligacy. Some guy named Rex Nutting put together some data on government spending and claimed that Barack Obama was the most frugal President in recent history. I pointed out that Mr. Nutting’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 21, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
As illustrated by this chart, economists are lousy forecasters. To be more specific, economists are no better than fortune tellers when trying to make short-run macroeconomic forecasts. Heck, if we actually knew what was going to happen over the next 12 months, we’d...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 19, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
As regular readers know, one of my great challenges in life is trying to educate policy makers about the Laffer Curve, which is simply a way of illustrating that government won’t collect any revenue if tax rates are zero, but also won’t collect much revenue if tax...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 14, 2013 | Blogs, Taxation
As a fiscal policy economist, one of my responsibilities is to educate policy makers about the impact of taxation. Simply stated, I try to help them understand that taxes alter behavior. If you tax something at a higher rate, you get less of whatever is being taxed....
