My good friend Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University did a very illuminating interview with Bloomberg about the serial inaccuracy of government fiscal forecasts. Veronique uses health care as an example, giving particular attention to the Medicare program. One obvious implication is that we should have zero faith in the […]

I’ve beaten up on Newt Gingrich for his views on global warming and his attack on the Ryan budget plan, but I’m completely on his side in the faux controversy about whether it is racist to call Barack Obama the “food stamp president.” This story from ABC News should worry everybody, regardless of whether the […]

In the past, I’ve joked about “limousine liberals,” which is a phrase for elitist left wingers who pretend to identify with average people while living the good life. I’ve even mocked these folks on TV. But I always thought the term was symbolic. Not anymore. Here’s a segment of a news report, based on a […]

All I can say is that I’m thankful the United States is not part of the European Union, at least if this little tidbit from the UK-based Telegraph is true. American politicians waste a lot of money, but even I doubt they ever spent tax dollars on something that is simultaneously so idiotic and so […]

Way back in February of 2010, I wrote that a Greek bailout would be a failure. Not surprisingly, the parasites at the International Monetary Fund and the political elite from other European nations ignored my advice and gave tens of billions of dollars to Greece’s corrupt politicians. The bailout happened in part because politicians and […]

It’s not often that I am unenthusiastic about the possibility of a nation reducing its corporate tax rate. But when the country is doing the right thing for the wrong reason, I hope that feelings of ambivalence are understandable. In this case, some Irish politicians are talking about using a lower corporate tax rate as […]

One of the biggest threats against global prosperity is the anti-tax competition project of a Paris-based international bureaucracy known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, acting at the behest of the European welfare states that dominate its membership, wants the power to tell nations (including the United States!) what is acceptable […]

Last night, I spoke at the closing dinner of the European Resource Bank. My message was simple and straightforward: Entitlement programs are killing the developed world. That’s not exactly a surprise, but what may be shocking is America’s relative position. In my remarks, I shared with the audience some data from a 2010 study by […]

I’ve had dozens of posts about overpaid bureaucrats. Indeed, I’ve largely stopped blogging about the topic because it is so depressing to constantly be reminded about how a privileged class of people is manipulating the system to coercively obtain undeserved compensation from their less-fortunate neighbors. But every so often I see a story which cries […]

I wrote yesterday about the shocking case of a millionaire collecting food stamps. Today, I have an equally disgusting story of government waste. The Social Security program is actuarially bankrupt, with unfunded liabilities of several trillion dollars. Our topic today deals with the disability portion of Social Security, which is in especially poor shape, with […]