by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
If you want to understand Washington’s fiscal profligacy, this chart based on OMB data shows what has happened to the federal budget over the past 15 years. There are two big things to understand. We had some very admirable spending restraint...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 27, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
While writing about Colombia’s fiscal problems 10 days ago, I issued my 20th Theorem of Government. Simply stated, governments get in trouble because politicians spend too much money. To be more specific, they don’t follow my Golden Rule. And that’s exactly...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 25, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
In 2018, I shared a study that gave people a way to predict when a country would suffer a fiscal crisis. I liked the findings because the authors concluded that spending restraint was the best way of staying out of trouble. Now there’s a new...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 17, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Three days ago, I wrote about Brazil’s budgetary chaos and I issued a corollary to my Golden Rule. Whenever there is a fiscal mess, excess spending growth is the cause. Today, let’s apply that lesson to another South American country. There’s currently...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 14, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I wrote in 2013 that “for any fiscal policy question, spending restraint is the answer,” which is simply a restatement of my Golden Rule. I’m going to augment that by stating that “whenever there is a fiscal mess, excess spending growth is the cause.”...
