The Link Between Systemic Risk and One-Size-Fits-All Regulation

by Dan Mitchell | Jun 22, 2013 | Blogs, Tax Harmonization, Taxation

After the financial crisis, the consensus among government officials was that we needed more regulation. This irked me in two ways. 1. I don’t want more costly red tape in America, particularly when the evidence is quite strong that the crisis was caused by government...

Belgium Must Be Hopeless if Politicians from Brussels Are Criticizing Germany for Being too Capitalistic

by Dan Mitchell | Mar 24, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Europe, Minimum Wage

I’m not a big fan of the German government. Angela Merkel has a disturbing desire to impose fiscal and political union on the European continent. And even the supposedly free market Free Democratic Party seems perfectly comfortable with a gradual descent into statism....

A Simple Lesson of Policy Diversity from “The Black Swan” Author: Don’t Put All Your Financial Eggs in One Regulatory Basket

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 24, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation

Several months ago, I wrote a rather wonky post explaining that the western world became rich in large part because of jurisdictional competition. Citing historians, philosophers, economists, and other great thinkers, I explained that the rivalry made possible by...

Another Push for Global Taxation from the United Nations

by Dan Mitchell | Sep 29, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation

I spoke at the United Nations back in May, explaining that more government was the wrong way to help the global economy. But I guess I’m not very persuasive. The bureaucrats have just released a new report entitled, “In Search of New Development Finance.” As you can...

Study from German Economists Shows that Tax Competition and Fiscal Decentralization Limit Income Redistribution

by Dan Mitchell | Sep 4, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Tax Harmonization, Taxation

If we want to avoid the kind of Greek-style fiscal collapse implied by this BIS and OECD data, we need some external force to limit the tendency of politicians to over-tax and over-spend. That’s why I’m a big advocate of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and...