by Dan Mitchell | Apr 20, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
I wrote last September that the budget plan put forward by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson was fatally flawed. There were some positive features in the plan, to be sure, such as lower marginal tax rates. And I suppose it’s worth noting that the burden of government...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 12, 2013 | Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
If you include all the appendices, there are thousands of pages in the President’s new budget. But the first thing I do every year is find the table showing how fast the burden of government spending will increase. That’s Table S-1 of the budget, and it shows that the...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 6, 2013 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Are we about to see a new kinder-and-gentler Obama? Has the tax-and-spend President of the past four years been replaced by a fiscal moderate? That’s certainly the spin we’re getting from the White House about the President’s new budget. Let’s look at this theme,...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 28, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
If I live to be 100 years old, I suspect I’ll still be futilely trying to educate politicians that there’s not a simplistic linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. You can’t double tax rates, for instance, and expect to double tax revenue. Simply...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 25, 2013 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Tax Harmonization, Tax Havens, Taxation
I’ve been very critical of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Most recently, I criticized the Paris-based bureaucracy for making the rather remarkable assertion that a value-added tax would boost growth and employment. But that’s just the tip...
