by Dan Mitchell | Dec 23, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I greatly admire Switzerland’s “debt brake” because it’s really a spending cap. Politicians are not allowed to increase spending faster than average revenue growth over a multi-year period, which basically means spending can only grow at the rate of inflation plus...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 21, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Taxation
There aren’t many fiscal policy role models in Europe. Switzerland surely is at the top of the list. The burden of government spending is modest by European standards, in part because of a very good spending cap that prevents politicians from overspending when...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 18, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
One of the key ways of controlling state and local tax burdens, according to this map from the Tax Foundation, is to not have an income tax. But that’s not too surprising. States have just a couple of ways of generating significant tax revenue, so it stands to reason...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
Since I want to shut down the Department of Agriculture, that obviously means getting rid of the various subsidy programs that line the pockets of politically connected agri-businesses. To get an idea of how these corrupt programs operate, I strongly encourage you to...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Tax Competition, Taxation
Hopefully we’re all disgusted when insiders rig the system to rip off taxpayers. And I suspect you’re not surprised to know that the worst examples come from California, which is in a race with Illinois to see which state can become the Greece of America. Well, the...
