While Much of America Suffers with Stagnation, Washington’s Political Class Is Having a Very Merry Christmas

by Dan Mitchell | Dec 27, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Regulations

In large part because of an excessive burden of government, the American economy is suffering European-style stagnation, with even the Washington Post now confessing that growth far below the long-run trend. This helps explain why job creation has been so dismal in...

Giving Control of the Internet to the United Nations Would Be Like “Handing a Stradivarius to a Gorilla”

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 26, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Regulations

The United Nations may be useful as a forum for world leaders, but it is not a productive place to develop policy. The international bureaucracy compulsively supports statist initiatives that would reduce individual liberty and expand the burden of government. Global...

The United States Ranks Near the Top in the World Bank’s Doing Business Index

by Dan Mitchell | Nov 11, 2012 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation

I have a love-hate attitude toward international bureaucracies. I’m mostly negative about organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, and OECD. In part this is because they are a very expensive burden on taxpayers, but also because they generally push for bad...

Free Markets Protect Consumers with “Mutually Reinforcing” Private Regulation

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 29, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Free Market, Regulations

I’ve written before about the heavy costs of regulation, including these rather sobering statistics. Or, to be more accurate, here are some staggering numbers. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of...

Assuming You’re Intellectually Lazy, there’s a Very Strong Argument for Command-and-Control Regulation

by Dan Mitchell | Sep 26, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Regulations

Even though I’m a fiscal policy economist, I often get hit with questions on other topics. This frequently happens when I’m overseas and I’m put in the position of defending every nuance of free market policy. I don’t mind pontificating on other issues, but I get...