by Dan Mitchell | Dec 28, 2016 | Blogs, Crime, Society
What do Andy Johnson, Anthony Smelley, the Hammond family, Charlie Engle, Tammy Cooper, Nancy Black, Russ Caswell, Jacques Wajsfelner, Jeff Councelller, Eric Garner, Martha Boneta, James Slatic, Carole Hinders, Salvatore Culosi, and James Lieto, as well as the Sierra...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2016 | Blogs, Economics
Earlier this year, I borrowed from Dante’s Inferno and created the Five Circles of Statist Hell. At the time, I suggested that Venezuela was on the cusp of moving from the third circle (“widespread poverty and economic misery”) to the fourth circle (“systematic and...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 17, 2016 | Blogs, Crime, Society
When writing about money laundering laws, I’ll sometimes highlight gross abuses by government and I’ll periodically make the usual libertarian arguments about privacy. But I mostly focus on how the laws simply don’t make sense from a cost-benefit perspective....
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 6, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Regulations, Taxation
What’s the worst development in economic policy of the Obama years? The faux stimulus scheme? The Obamacare boondoggle? The fiscal cliff tax hike? The Dodd-Frank bailout bill? Those are all good answers, but if you look at the data from Economic Freedom of the World,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 28, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs
While I dismiss conspiracy theories that presume there’s a plan in Washington to strip away our rights, I do think there’s a natural “public choice” explanation for ever-growing, ever-more powerful government. And that can lead to ever-expanding examples of abusive...