by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
I have many pet peeves, but one that causes me endless frustration is the Washington “spending cut” scam. This happens when politicians increase spending, but claim that they’re cutting spending because they previously had planned to make government even bigger. The...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 9, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
I’ve already written about the terrible work of the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO did an awful job on the stimulus, for instance, repeatedly asserting that diverting money from the private sector to government somehow would create jobs. CBO also was a disaster...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 9, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The Economist has a fascinating webpage that allows you to look at all the world’s nations and compare them based on various measures of government debt (and for various years). The most economically relevant measure is public debt as a share of GDP, and you can see...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 6, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Keynesian economic theory is the social-science version of a perpetual motion machine. It assumes that you can increase your prosperity by taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. Not surprisingly, nations that adopt this approach do...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 5, 2010 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I hate taxes more than anyone, but other policies matter as well, so if I had the choice of replacing current government policies with the ones that existed at the end of the Clinton years, I would gladly make that trade. Yes, it would mean higher tax rates, but it...
