by Dan Mitchell | Apr 17, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
As Ronald Reagan pointed out many years ago, Washington is a company town. But rather than being home to a firm or industry that earns money by providing value to willing consumers, the “company” is a federal government that uses a coercive tax system to provide...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 9, 2017 | Blogs, Education, Government Spending, Government Waste
The story of the private sector is that competition generates ever-more output in ways that bring ever-higher living standards to ever-greater numbers of people. By contrast, the story of the government is inefficiency and waste as interest groups figure out how to...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 26, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Health Care, Welfare and Entitlements
The United States is going to become another Greece, and it’s largely because of poorly designed entitlement programs. As the old saying goes, demography is destiny. Let’s look at just one piece of that puzzle. James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute has a...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 9, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
When I debate one of my leftist friends about deficits, it’s often a strange experience because none of us actually care that much about red ink. I’m motivated instead by a desire to shrink the burden of government spending, so I argue for spending restraint rather...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 16, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
When politicians create programs and announce projects, they routinely lie about the real costs. Their primary goal is to get initial approval for various boondoggles and they figure it will be too late to reverse path once it becomes apparent that something will cost...
