by Dan Mitchell | Aug 12, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Why does the Tea Party attract such vitriolic opposition, whether from Obama’s IRS or big-government Republicans like Karl Rove? The answer is simple. People in Washington don’t like the Tea Party because this citizen uprising is making it difficult to engage in...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 31, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
In an interview last week about Detroit’s bankruptcy, I explained that the city got in trouble because of growing dependency and an ever-rising burden of government spending. I also warned that the federal government faces the same challenge. Washington is in trouble...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 28, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
There are all sorts of ways to measure the burden of government spending. The most obvious approach is to look at the share of economic output consumed by the public sector. That’s what I did, for instance, when comparing fiscal policy in France and Switzerland. And...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 27, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
About two weeks ago, while making an important point about the Laffer Curve, here’s what I wrote about the fiscal disaster in Detroit. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece....
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 25, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Back in 2010, I put together a “Moocher Index” as a rough measure of which states had the highest levels of welfare dependency after adjusting for poverty rates. My goal was to answer this question. Is there a greater willingness to sign up for income redistribution...
