by Dan Mitchell | May 14, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending, Keynesian
Are there any fact checkers at the New York Times? Since they’ve allowed some glaring mistakes by Paul Krugman (see here and here), I guess the answer is no. But some mistakes are worse than others. Consider a recent column by David Stuckler of Oxford and Sanjay Basu...
by Dan Mitchell | May 13, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 7, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Taxation, VAT
The most important, powerful, and relevant argument against the value-added tax in the short run is that we can balance the budget in just five years by capping spending so it grows at the rate of inflation, a very modest level of fiscal restraint. The most important,...
by Dan Mitchell | May 6, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the...
by Dan Mitchell | May 5, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Keynesian
Paul Krugman recently tried to declare victory for Keynesian economics over so-called austerity, but all he really accomplished was to show that tax-financed government spending is bad for prosperity. More specifically, he presented a decent case against the...
