by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Government Spending, Taxation
The recipe for growth and prosperity isn’t very complicated. Adam Smith provided a very simple formula back in the 1700s. For folks who prefer a more quantitative approach, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World uses dozens of variables to rank nations...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 31, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
I sometimes feel like a broken record about entitlement programs. How many times, after all, can I point out that America is on a path to become a decrepit European-style welfare state because of a combination of demographic changes and poorly designed entitlement...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 28, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
I wrote yesterday about how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is pushing for bigger government in China. That’s a remarkable bit of economic malpractice by the Paris-based international bureaucracy, especially since China is only ranked...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 21, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
I’ve looked at some of the grim fiscal implications of demographic changes the United States and Europe. Now let’s look at what’s happening in Asia. The International Monetary Fund has a recent study that looks at shortfalls in government-run pension schemes and...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 8, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
Once of the reasons that tax increases in Washington are such a bad idea (and one of the reasons why a value-added tax is an especially bad idea) is that the prospect of additional tax revenue kills any possibility of genuine entitlement reform. Simply stated,...