by Dan Mitchell | Feb 16, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, States, Welfare and Entitlements
For a wide range of reasons, the federal government should get out of the redistribution racket. Welfare programs are costly, but they’re also not among the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution. But for those who don’t care whether...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 18, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
Let’s dig into the issue of whether the United States should become more like France. In a 2014 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Stanford University’s Robert Hall wrote about America’s sub-par economic performance. His opening line was basically a...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 11, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I’ve written about how statist policies help the rich and hurt the poor. And I’ve also pontificated on the destructive and foolish subsidies dispensed by the execrable Department of Agriculture. Now let’s mix those two issues (though I hasten to add that this isn’t...
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...
