I’m in Vilnius, Lithuania, where I just finished speaking to a regional conference of the European Students for Liberty. I subjected the kids to more than 90 minutes of pontificating and 73 PowerPoint slides, but I could have saved them a lot of time if I simply showed them this Rahn Curve video and then […]

It seems I was put on the planet to educate people about the negative economic impact of excessive government. Though I must be doing a bad job because the burden of the public sector keeps rising. But hope springs eternal. To help make the case, I’ve cited research from international bureaucracies such as the Organization […]

Almost exactly one year ago, I did a post entitled “A Laffer Curve Tutorial” because I wanted readers to have all the arguments and data in one place (and also because it meant I wouldn’t have to track down all the videos when someone asked me for the full set). Today, I’m doing the same […]

I don’t expect a  good outcome to the European fiscal crisis, largely because nobody seems to understand that the real problem is excessive government spending. The economic illiterates in the press sometimes say the fight in Europe is between austerity and Keynesianism, but that’s not accurate. It’s really a battle between those who think big […]

Last month, I shared a video about bloated bureaucracy from a group called Government Gone Wild. That generated a big response, so here’s another video from the same group, only this one looks at egregious examples of government waste. If you like videos on wasteful spending, but prefer a more attractive narrator, click here. And […]

The President’s “green energy” loan program has turned into an embarrassment for the White House, in part because of the sordid corruption associated with the bankruptcy of Solyndra. But the subsidy program also has attracted some negative attention for its failure to create jobs – even from media outlets that normally are sympathetic to big […]

Susan Feiner, in a recent blog post for Ms Magazine, argues that continuing deficits favor the feminist movement. The post is entitled “A Feminist Economist Speaks Out: Deficits are a Grrrl’s Best Friend”. Normally I wouldn’t give any time to addressing the arguments of someone who not only refers to her opposition as “hawks” but […]

The United States has been on a decade-long spending binge. Thanks to the profligate policies of both Bush and Obama, the burden of federal spending has climbed to about 25 percent of economic output, up from 18.2 percent of GDP when Bill Clinton left office. The political class tells us that more government is good […]

I mentioned the other day a claim from CEI that regulatory burdens cost the economy nearly $2 trillion in 2008. The Phoenix Center also recently produced a policy bulletin examining the costs of the regulatory state (Hat-tip: Big Government). In quantifying the relationship between government spending and economic growth based upon 50 years of data, […]

Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous compliance costs of the internal revenue code. Narrated by Hiwa Alaghebandian of the American Enterprise Institute, the mini-documentary explains how needless complexity creates an added […]