by Dan Mitchell | Dec 24, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I wrote a column earlier this month about the “world’s most depressing tweet,” which came from the Census Bureau and noted that the suburbs of Washington, DC, are the richest parts of America. To be sure, I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole since a tweet about...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
I have a four-part video series on trade-related topics. Part I focused on the irrelevance of trade balances. Part II looked at specialization and comparative advantage. Here’s Part III, which explains how trade (whether domestic or international) leads to creative...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 16, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I periodically ask my left-leaning friends to identify a nation that became rich with statist policies. They usually point to Sweden or Denmark, but I point out that Sweden and Denmark became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s, when government was very small. At that...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
I periodically explain that labor and capital are the two factors of production and that our prosperity depends on how efficiently they are allocated. But I probably don’t spend enough time highlighting how they are complementary, meaning that workers and capitalists...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 24, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
My favorite publication every year is Economic Freedom of the World. It’s filled with data on fiscal policy, regulatory policy, trade policy, monetary policy, and quality of governance for 162 jurisdictions, and it provides an unbiased way of gauging the degree to...