by Dan Mitchell | Dec 31, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Trade
One of my annual traditions is to share the “best and worst news” for each year. I started in 2013, and continued in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. Looking back, 2016 clearly was the best year, though entirely because of things that happened overseas (the Brits vote for...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 30, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, Trade
I periodically try to remind people that you can’t explain or understand economic performance by looking at just one policy. I’ve argued, for instance, good tax policy isn’t a panacea if there are many other policies that expand the burden of government. Likewise, bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 21, 2018 | Blogs, Taxation
I have a series of columns where I explore tactical disagreements with folks who generally favor free markets and less government. In Part I, I defended the flat tax, which had been criticized by Reihan Salam In Part II, I explained why I thought a comprehensive...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 20, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation, VAT
A couple of weeks ago, I used a story about a local tax issue in Washington, DC, to make an important point about how new tax increases cause more damage than previous tax increases because “deadweight losses” increase geometrically rather than arithmetically. Simply...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 17, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I recently wrote about the failed 1990 budget deal. My big complaint was that President George H.W. Bush compounded the mistake of higher taxes by also allowing a big increase in the burden of government spending. However, I didn’t blame the agreement for that year’s...
