Every day brings more and more evidence that Obamanomics is failing in Europe.  I wrote some “Observations on the European Farce” last week, but the news this morning is even more surreal. Let’s start with France, where I endorsed the explicit socialist over the implicit socialist precisely because of a morbid desire to see a […]

To answer the question in the title, it means you need to read the fine print. This is because we have a president who thinks the government shouldn’t confiscate more than 20 percent of a company’s income, but he only gives that advice when he’s in Ghana. And the same president says it’s time to […]

I’ve mocked France on several occasions, and I thought Sarkozy was so bad that I figured (in the long run) the election of Hollande was a step in the right direction. But in certain ways, France isn’t as bad as the United States. The New York Times has a big story about French entrepreneurs and […]

One of my first blog posts, back in 2009, featured Veronique de Rugy in a video, warning that America should not adopt the statist policies that caused so much damage in her home country of France. Sadly (but predictably), the politicians in Washington ignored Veronique’s sage advice. The burden of government has expanded since that […]

With both France and Greece deciding to jump out of the left-wing frying pan into the even-more-left-wing fire, European fiscal policy has become quite a controversial topic. But I find this debate and discussion rather tedious and unrewarding, largely because it pits advocates of Keynesian spending (the so-called “growth” camp) against supporters of higher taxes […]

One year ago, I wrote about how the French government was getting unexpected additional revenues following the implementation of lower tax rates. This is the Laffer Curve in action, and it’s happening again in France, only this time because the government reduced the wealth tax. Here’s part of the story at Tax-news.com. France’s solidarity tax […]

The German Chancellor and French President have put together a plan to boost growth. Sounds like a good goal, but what specifically are they proposing? Some of the obvious ideas include: Lowering tax rates to boost incentives for productive behavior. Reducing the burden of government spending to allow more efficient allocation of labor and capital. […]

I realize this is about as productive as talking to a brick wall, but I’m going to explain some basic economics to statist French policymakers (oops, pardon the redundancy). This heroic – albeit surely futile – impulse is triggered by a recent proposal from President Sarkozy to supposedly boost job creation by lowering payroll taxes […]

Appearances can be deceiving. I saw an article with a blaring headline that warmed my heart: “France’s Sarkozy Eyes Welfare Rethink, Fraud Clampdown.” Could it be, I thought, that the political elite finally realized that the welfare state was the wrong model? Had they finally realized, as demonstrated by these cartoons, that it was foolish […]

The folks at U.S. News & World Report have posted an online debate on the never-ending topic: “Does Stimulus Spending Work?“ You know my thoughts on the topic, including my thumbs-down to Obama’s latest stimulus scheme, so it won’t surprise you to know that I think Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center beat her […]