by Dan Mitchell | Jul 15, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Two days ago, I looked at top income tax rates for the various states. Yesterday, I shared the data for the states on sales tax rates. The big takeaway from those two sources of data is that California politicians are very greedy. But are they the greediest...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 6, 2020 | Big Government, Blogs
Having written more than 5000 columns over the past ten-plus years, I’ve learned that policy analysis doesn’t “go viral.” But I got a small taste of what that would be like when I shared an image in 2016 showing that the right kind of class warfare pits productive...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 9, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Bureaucracy
I periodically will make use of “most depressing” in the title of a column when sharing bad news. And new data from the Census Bureau definitely qualifies as bad news. It confirms what I’ve written about how the Washington region has become the richest part of...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 17, 2018 | Blogs, Taxation
I’m a big fan of tax competition because politicians (i.e., stationary bandits) are far more likely to control their greed (i.e., keep tax burdens reasonable) if they know taxpayers have the ability to shift economic activity to lower-tax jurisdictions. For all...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 27, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs
When I write about politicians in their role as politicians (rather than their policy prescriptions), it’s usually to mock them for venality, corruption, immorality, sleaze, incompetence, or hypocrisy. Today, I want to plead with them to exercise self-restraint. Some...
