by Dan Mitchell | Aug 10, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Compared to most of the world, Japan is a rich country. But it’s important to understand that Japan became rich when the burden of government was very small and there was no welfare state. Indeed, as recently as 1970, Japan’s fiscal policy was rated by Economic...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 7, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Largely because of my support for jurisdictional competition, I’m a big fan of federalism. Simply stated, our liberties are better protected when there’s decentralization since politicians are less like to over-tax and over-spend when they know potential victims of...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 30, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
Because of changing demographics and poorly designed entitlement programs, the burden of government spending in the United States (in the absence of genuine reform) is going to increase dramatically over the next few decades. That bad outlook will get even worse...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 28, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Back in 2011, CF&P released this video citing four nations – Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, and New Zealand – that achieved very good results with multi-year periods of genuine spending restraint. Today, let’s focus on what’s been happening with government spending in...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 24, 2020 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Supply Side, Taxation
I participated in a debate yesterday on “tax havens” for the BBC World Service. If you read last month’s two-part series on the topic (here and here), you already know I’m a big defender of low-tax jurisdictions. But it’s always interesting to interact with people...