by Dan Mitchell | Jun 17, 2019 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
Proponents of bigger government sometimes make jaw-dropping statements. I even have collections of bizarre assertions by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What’s especially shocking is when statists twist language, such as when they claim all income is the...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 7, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
Donald Trump and other populist leaders frequently are condemned for undermining the “rules-based system” that is the basis of the “postwar order.” What exactly is meant by this criticism? In the case of Trump, is it disapproval of his protectionism? Yes, but that’s...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 3, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
When I ask friends on the left to answer my two-question challenge about prosperity and the size of government, they sometimes will flip the script and demand that I answer their version of the same question. Name a jurisdiction that became rich with small government,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 26, 2019 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
When I think about social welfare spending, I mostly worry about recipients getting trapped in dependency. But I also feel sorry for taxpayers, who are bearing ever-higher costs to finance redistribution programs. Today’s column won’t focus on those issues. Instead,...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 19, 2019 | Blogs, Economics, Tax Competition, Taxation
Like most taxpayer-supported international bureaucracies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has a statist orientation. The Paris-based OECD is particularly bad on fiscal policy and it is infamous for its efforts to prop up Europe’s...
