by Dan Mitchell | Jul 7, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, States, Taxation
Back at the end of April, President Trump got rolled in his first big budget negotiation with Congress. The deal, which provided funding for the remainder of the 2017 fiscal year, was correctly perceived as a victory for Democrats. How could this happen, given that...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 9, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
Since I’m a fiscal wonk, it’s sometimes tempting to overstate the importance of good tax policy. So I’m always reminding myself that all sorts of other factors matter for a jurisdiction’s competitiveness and success, including regulation and government effectiveness...
by Dan Mitchell | May 3, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Seven years ago, I wrote about the “Butterfield Effect,” which is a term used to mock clueless journalists. A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 28, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Supply Side, Taxation
I shared yesterday an example of how a big tax increase on expensive homes led to fewer sales. Indeed, the drop was so pronounced that the government didn’t just collect less money than projected, which is a very common consequence when fiscal burdens increase, but it...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 25, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
For more than 30 years, I’ve been trying to educate my leftist friends about supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve. Why is it so hard for them to recognize, I endlessly wonder, that when you tax something, you get less of it? And why don’t they realize that when...