by Dan Mitchell | May 11, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Europe, Keynesian
Political insiders remember Tim Geithner for his role in promoting the bailout culture and crony capitalism in Washington. Comedians remember him for the laughable hypocrisy of urging higher taxes for others while cheating on his own tax return. But I mostly think of...
by Dan Mitchell | May 8, 2013 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
I’m either a total optimist or a glutton for punishment. I recently explained the benefits of “tax havens” for the unfriendly readers of the New York Times. Now I’m defending a different form of tax competition for CNN, another news outlet that leans left. In this...
by Dan Mitchell | May 7, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Taxation, VAT
The most important, powerful, and relevant argument against the value-added tax in the short run is that we can balance the budget in just five years by capping spending so it grows at the rate of inflation, a very modest level of fiscal restraint. The most important,...
by Dan Mitchell | May 5, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
Paul Krugman recently tried to declare victory for Keynesian economics over so-called austerity, but all he really accomplished was to show that tax-financed government spending is bad for prosperity. More specifically, he presented a decent case against the...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 28, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a...
