by Dan Mitchell | Mar 12, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Government Spending, Taxation
Last year, while lounging on the beach in the Caribbean…oops, I mean while doing off-site research, I developed the first iteration of a rule to describe how fiscal policy should operate. Good fiscal policy exists when the private sector grows faster than the public...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 29, 2012 | Blogs, Flat Tax, Taxation
This interview with the IRS Commissioner is really irritating. He wants us to believe that all the problems exist because of bad laws enacted by Congress. I certainly agree that the crowd in Washington is venal, corrupt, and duplicitous. But the IRS takes a bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 30, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Flat Tax, Government Spending, Taxation
Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent. Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax rates are punitive, folks earn and report less taxable income, and...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 25, 2012 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Keynesian, Taxation
Perhaps the title of this post is a bit unfair since the International Monetary Fund is good on some issues, such as reducing subsidies. And some of the economists at the IMF even produce good research. But I can’t help but get agitated that this behemoth global...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 14, 2011 | Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Laffer Curve, Taxation
Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an attack on the flat tax – and I was happy after I read his column. Why? Well, because his arguments...
