by Dan Mitchell | Nov 16, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, VAT
I’m currently in Tokyo for an Innovation Summit. Perhaps because I once referred to Japan as a basket case, I’ve been asked to speak about policies that are needed to boost the nation’s competitiveness. That sounds like an easy topic since I can simply explain that...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 22, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending, Taxation
The cossetted bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund are on a roll. In the past few months, they’ve published reports pushing a very misguided and statist agenda. In June, I wrote about the IMF pushing a theory that higher taxes would improve growth in the...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 19, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
I’ve written several times that the left wants big tax hikes on poor and middle-class taxpayers. Simply stated, that’s the only way they can finance a European-sized welfare state. Some of them even admit they want to pillage ordinary taxpayers. The editors at the New...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 15, 2017 | Blogs, Taxation
When companies want to boost sales, they sometimes tinker with products and then advertise them as “new and improved.” In the case of governments, though, I suspect “new” is not “improved.” The British territory of Jersey, for instance, has a very good tax system. It...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 14, 2017 | Blogs, Taxation
I’m not a fan of the International Monetary Fund. Like many other international bureaucracies, it pushes a statist agenda. The IMF’s support for bad policy gets me so agitated that I’ve sometimes referred to it as the “dumpster fire” or “Dr. Kevorkian” of the global...