by Dan Mitchell | Jan 12, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
The long-term trend in China is positive. Economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s have helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. And thanks to decades of strong growth, living standards for ordinary Chinese citizens are far higher than...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 2, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
There are many reasons why I’m not a big fan of the United Nations. Like other international bureaucracies, it supports statist policies (higher taxes, gun control, regulation, etc) that hinder economic development and limit human liberty by increasing the burden of...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 7, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
The communist economic system was a total disaster, but it wasn’t because of excessive taxation. Communist countries generally didn’t even have tax systems. The real problem was that communism was based on central planning, which is the notion that supposedly wise...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 15, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
A couple of days ago, I (sort of) applauded Senator Bernie Sanders. Not for his views, which are based on primitive redistributionism, but because he challenged Republicans to state whether they support capitalism. And I think it would be very revealing to see which...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 4, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Whenever I need to explain the difference between socialism and capitalism, I start by noting that socialism technically is different from Obama-style big-government redistributionism and cronyism. Socialism involves something more pervasive, involving government...