by Dan Mitchell | Dec 16, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
Whenever I pontificate about the health of the American economy, I feel like Goldilocks. Instead of arguing that the economic porridge is too hot or too cold, or that the economic bed is too hard or too soft, I conclude that we’re stuck in the middle. We generally...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 29, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
In conversations with statists, I’ve learned that many of them actually believe the economy is a fixed pie. This misconception leads them to think that rich people get rich only by somehow making others poor. In this simplistic worldview, a bigger slice for one person...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 6, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Three years ago, I shared a chart about the fiscal burden of the welfare state, calling it the picture that says a thousand word. It’s astounding, after all, that taxpayers spend so much money on means-tested programs and get such miserable results. Indeed, if we took...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 18, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Some issues never seem to get resolved. One would think, for instance, that leftists would be more cautious about pushing for a bigger welfare state given the fiscal crisis in Europe. But we have folks like Bernie Sanders openly arguing we should be more like nations...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 27, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
It’s no exaggeration to say that a nation’s long-run vitality and prosperity are correlated with the spirit of independence and self-reliance among its people. Simply stated, if too many people thinks it’s okay to ride in the wagon of government dependency, that a...
