by Dan Mitchell | Nov 27, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Flat Tax, Government Spending, Taxation
I normally have a Thanksgiving-themed column every year (2024, 2023, 2022, etc, etc), but I just saw something so irritating from the pro-tax crowd at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that I’m going to break with tradition....
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 21, 2025 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Honest leftists (the “Okunites“) generally acknowledge that laissez-faire policies deliver more growth, but they nonetheless favor high taxes and redistribution because they argue that social equality matters a lot. However, according to this chart, there’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 6, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, VAT
The case against the value-added tax (VAT) is not complicated. Simply stated, this hidden type of national sales tax was a key precursor for the expansion of the European welfare state. As you can see in the chart, the burden of government spending...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 5, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
When I unveiled my Eighth Theorem of Government in 2020, my target was the head of the International Monetary Fund, a bureaucrat with a very generous tax-free salary who wanted other people to pay higher taxes to fund bigger welfare states. Her...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 2, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
About two months ago, I wrote that the United Kingdom needed to copy Javier Milei and dramatically reduce the burden of government spending. The immediate goal should be to reverse the post-pandemic spending surge of the Johnson and...
