by Dan Mitchell | May 4, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, VAT
I’ve written before how “The Value-Added Tax Would Be a Money Machine for Big Government.” Writing for Bloomberg, Josh Barro has a piece entitled, “Value-Added Tax Would Raise Tons for U.S. Coffers.” So you might think we see eye to eye on this issue, but that would...
by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There are two serious problems with America’s Social Security system. Almost everyone knows about the first problem, which is that the system is bankrupt, with huge unfunded liabilities of about $30 trillion. The other crisis is that the system gives workers a lousy...
by Dan Mitchell | May 1, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Keynesian
There’s an old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. This certainly is a good description of Keynesians, who relentlessly push more government spending as some sort of magic potion for the economy –...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 28, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I’ve complained endlessly that America’s fiscal problem is too much spending, and that deficits and debt are best understood as symptoms of that underlying disease. So I’m obviously a big fan of this new video from the folks at Learn Liberty. I like how they use...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 26, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Even though I favor radical reductions in the burden of government, I’ve made the point that good fiscal policy merely requires that government spending grow slower than the private sector – what I call Mitchell’s Golden Rule. And if lawmakers simply cap the growth of...