by Dan Mitchell | Feb 11, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 30, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
Last year, I came up with a saying that “Bad Government Policy Begets More Bad Government Policy” and labeled it “Mitchell’s Law” during a bout of narcissism. There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, such as the misguided War on Drugs being a precursor to...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 11, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Europe, Government Spending
Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal in order to prop...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 30, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a “Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy” that was probably a bit too wordy. Good fiscal policy exists when the private sector grows faster than the public sector, while fiscal ruin is inevitable if government spending grows faster than the...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 8, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs
Over the years, Obama has said some really disturbing things. In my video on class warfare, I noted that Obama in 2008 said he wanted to raise the capital gains tax even if the government lost revenue. It was necessary to punish success, he said, to promote...