by Dan Mitchell | Feb 16, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
Federalism is the gold standard for reforming redistribution programs. This was the approach used in the very successful Clinton-era welfare reform, and it should be replicated for other means-tested programs. The core argument is that the federal government does a...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 12, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs
Writing a column every day is a recipe for making an occasional mistake. Sometimes the errors are minor, such as when I put Tucson in New Mexico rather than Arizona. And sometimes they are less trivial, such as when I mischaracterized subsidies for the Postal Service...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Back in 2014, I shared a report that looked at the growth of redistribution spending in developed nations. That bad news in the story was that the welfare state was expanding at a rapid pace in the United States. The good news is that the overall fiscal burden of...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 15, 2017 | Uncategorized
Inequality is now a major dividing line in the world of public policy. Supporters of limited government think it’s not a big issue and instead focus on the policies that are most likely to generate growth. Simply stated, they tend not to care if some people get richer...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 21, 2017 | Blogs, Taxation
One of my pet peeves is when people characterize Robin Hood as some sort of left-wing redistributionist. As I’ve explained, that’s utter nonsense. If you read the book or watch the movie starring Errol Flynn, Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham were the bad guys...