Tag Archives : Mitchell’s Golden Rule
A Fiscal Lesson from Germany
Germany isn’t exactly a fiscal role model. Tax rates are too onerous and government spending consumes about 44 percent of economic output. That’s even higher than it is in the United States, where politicians at the federal, state, and local levels divert about 39 percent of GDP into the public sector. Germany also has too much red […]
read more...A Golden Rule Christmas
Jay Leno had the all-time best Christmas joke and the school bureaucrats in Haymarket, VA, win the prize for the all-time worst example of anti-Christmas lunacy. But I must win the prize for being the biggest Christmas policy dork. I make this confession freely because there’s no other explanation for being very happy about this […]
read more...
Iceland, Switzerland, and the Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy
Being a glass-half-full kind of guy, I look for kernels of good news when examining economic policy around the world. I once even managed to find something to praise about French tax policy. And I can assure you that’s not a very easy task. I particularly try to find something positive to highlight when I’m […]
read more...
For any Fiscal Policy Question, Spending Restraint Is the Answer
Okay, I’ll admit the title of this post is an exaggeration. How to fix the mess at the IRS is a fiscal policy question, and that requires tax reform rather than spending restraint. But allow me a bit of literary license. We just had a big debt limit battle in Washington and, after a lot […]
read more...
Testifying to the Joint Economic Committee about “Debt Limit Brinksmanship”
As we get closer to the debt limit, the big spenders in Washington are becoming increasingly hysterical about the supposed possibility of default if politicians lose the ability to borrow more money. I testified yesterday to the Joint Economic Committee on “The Economic Costs of Debt-Ceiling Brinkmanship” and I explained (reiterating points I made back […]
read more...
Discussing Europe’s Faux Austerity with John Stossel
I want a smaller burden of government spending, so you can only imagine how frustrating it is for me to observe the fight in Europe. On one side of the debate you have pro-spenders, who call themselves “growth” advocates, but are really just Keynesians. On the other side of the debate, you have pro-taxers, who […]
read more...
Tax and Expenditure Limits: The Challenge of Turning Mitchell’s Golden Rule from Theory into Reality
The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the government. But it’s very easy for me to bluster […]
read more...A Swiss-Style Spending Cap Would Have Prevented the Current Fiscal Mess in America
I greatly admire Switzerland’s “debt brake” because it’s really a spending cap. Politicians are not allowed to increase spending faster than average revenue growth over a multi-year period, which basically means spending can only grow at the rate of inflation plus population. Theoretically, taxes could be hiked to allow more spending, but that hasn’t happened. […]
read more...
Spending Cuts and Tax Cuts Should Be an All-of-the-Above Option, Not an Either-Or Choice
I’m in Slovenia where I just finished indoctrinating educating a bunch of students on the importance of Mitchell’s Golden Rule as a means of restraining the burden of government spending. And I emphasized that the fiscal problem in Europe is the size of government, not the fact that nations are having a hard time borrowing […]
read more...Explaining Ryan’s Budget in the Wall Street Journal
Even though I’ve already made clear that I am less-than-overwhelmed by the thought of Mitt Romney in the White House, I worry that people will become to think I’m a GOP toady. That’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time providing favorable analysis and commentary on the relative merits of the Ryan budget (particularly proposed […]
read more...