by Dan Mitchell | Feb 24, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Regulations
I periodically share Mark Perry’s famous “Chart of the Century” to show that government intervention is a recipe for rising relative prices.* Since economic principles don’t change when you cross national borders, one might expect to see...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 17, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Regulations
Bureaucrats must have a knee-jerk desire to make citizens miserable. That’s the most logical explanation for their various initiatives to lower our quality of life. Inferior light bulbs Substandard toilets Inadequate washing machines Dribbling showers...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 12, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Regulations
There are plenty of problems, but this image reminds me that there are not necessarily government solutions. Indeed, it is quite likely that government created the problems in the first place and that additional government intervention...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 9, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Regulations
I wrote three columns about occupational licensing in 2017 (here, here, and here), but have since neglected the issue. It’s time to revisit the issue, and we’ll start with this John Stossel video. One of the reasons I’m writing about the issue is that the...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 17, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Regulations
The great French economist from the 1800s, Frederic Bastiat, famously explained that good economists are aware that government policies have indirect effects (the “unseen”). Bad economists, by contrast, only consider direct effects (the...
