by Dan Mitchell | Jul 1, 2015 | Blogs, Crime, Society
Politicians and bureaucrats are very creative in their pursuit of bad policy. In some case, I’m not even sure how to classify their actions. When the government squandered $224,000-plus for research on condom sizes, for instance, I thought that story easily could be...
by Dan Mitchell | May 13, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Constitution
If I had to pick a government policy that would be most upsetting to our Founding Fathers, I’d be tempted to pick the income tax. Or maybe some useless agency, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development. After all, surely the Founders didn’t envision – or...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 28, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs
Notwithstanding the title of this post, I’m not going to make an ultra-libertarian argument that all taxation is theft. Instead, today’s topic is about a more specialized version of theft by government, which technically is called civil asset forfeiture but more...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 24, 2015 | Blogs
I have a Bureaucrat Hall of Fame to recognize government workers who have demonstrated special skills in ripping off taxpayers. And I’ve created a Moocher Hall of Fame to highlight deadbeats and scroungers who best illustrate the entitlement mentality. But maybe it’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 13, 2015 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
What’s the Laffer Curve? It’s the simple, common-sense observation that there’s not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. Folks in the private sector understand this principle. No restaurant owner, for instance, would double meal prices and assume...
