by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2014 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
In the pre-World War I era, the fiscal burden of government was very modest in North America and Western Europe. Total government spending consumed only about 10 percent of economic output, most nations were free from theplague of the income tax, and the value-added...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 14, 2014 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
My favorite Heritage Foundation publication (other than…ahem…my studies on government spending and the flat tax) is the annual Index of Economic Freedom. Like the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 11, 2014 | Blogs, Economics
If you ask an economist about the difference between capitalism and socialism, you’ll probably get a boring answer about the size of government, the impact on incentives, and the power of the state. Or maybe you’ll get a nit-picking answer, sort of like when I...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 13, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market
Back in February, I said Australia probably was the country most likely to survive and prosper as much of the world suffered fiscal collapse and social chaos. In hindsight, I probably should have mentioned Canada as an option, in part because of pro-growth reforms in...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 1, 2013 | Blogs, Free Market
Forget the debate over whether Obama is a socialist. Now we’re discussing whether Jesus is for big government. Or, to be more accurate, the Pope has started a debate about whether free markets are bad, particularly for the poor. Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute...
