When you support limited government and individual freedom, you don’t enjoy many victories. Particularly if you’re relying on the U.S. Senate. But it occasionally happens. The Senate held firm and stopped Obama from getting a fiscal cliff tax hikeat the end of 2010. The Senate overwhelmingly voted against a VAT. The Senate unanimously rejected a Greek bailout. To be […]

It’s not easy being a libertarian, particularly if you follow public policy. Thomas Jefferson almost certainly was right when he wrote that “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Heck, just look at how small government used to be in the developed world compared to where it […]

If there was a special award for chutzpah, the easy winner would be the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund. These pampered bureaucrats get lavishly compensated and don’t have to pay tax on their bloated salaries. You would think this would make them a bit sensitive to the notion that it’s hugely hypocritical of them […]

Every day brings more and more evidence that Obamanomics is failing in Europe.  I wrote some “Observations on the European Farce” last week, but the news this morning is even more surreal. Let’s start with France, where I endorsed the explicit socialist over the implicit socialist precisely because of a morbid desire to see a […]

I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies, mostly because they always seem to promote bad policy such as higher tax rates. The International Monetary Fund is urging higher tax rates and pushing for nations to replace flat tax systems with so-called progressive taxation. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has embraced Obama’s class-warfare […]

“A pox on both your houses.”

In a grand Washington tradition, I periodically make imperious demands. In the past year or two, I’ve issued the following ultimatums to the GOP. o No tax increases, since more money for Washington will encourage a bigger burden of government and undermine prosperity. o Reform the biased number-crunching methodology at the Congressional Budget Office and […]

I speculated last year that the political elite finally might be realizing that higher tax rates are not the solution to Greece’s fiscal situation. Simply stated, you can only squeeze so much blood out of a stone, and pushing tax rates higher cripples growth and drives more people into the underground economy. Well, it turns […]

Perhaps the title of this post is a bit unfair since the International Monetary Fund is good on some issues, such as reducing subsidies. And some of the economists at the IMF even produce good research. But I can’t help but get agitated that this behemoth global bureaucracy wants more money when it has a […]

In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, I explained why Mitt Romney’s interest in a value-added tax is deeply troubling. One of my key points was that the VAT is a money machine for big government. But don’t believe me. Look at Japan, where the politicians see increases in the VAT as a […]