by Dan Mitchell | Apr 16, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, States
Politicians have a giant incentive to provide lavish benefits to interest groups that then recycle some of the loot back to elected officials in the form of campaign contributions. But the real key to the scam is that the bill gets imposed on future generations. The...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 6, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, States, Tax Competition, Taxation
I’m a big fan of federalism because states have the flexibility to choose good policy or bad policy. And that’s good news for me since I get to write about the consequences. One of the main lessons we learn (see here, here, here, here, and here) is that high-earning...
by Brian Garst | Mar 26, 2018 | Blogs, States, Tax Competition, Taxation
The $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill is full of waste, but one thing it thankfully does not include is the Internet Sales Tax. This is a welcome development, as Rep. Kristi Noem pushed hard to have her Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA) included as a rider in...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 23, 2018 | Blogs, States, Taxation
One of the key principles of a free society is that governmental power should be limited by national borders. Here’s an easy-to-understand example. Gambling is basically illegal (other than government-run lottery scams, of course) in my home state of Virginia. So they...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 26, 2018 | Blogs, States, Tax Competition, Taxation
In 2016, here’s some of what I wrote about the economic outlook in Illinois. There’s a somewhat famous quote from Adam Smith (“there is a great deal of ruin in a nation“) about the ability of a country to survive and withstand lots of bad public policy. I’ve tried to...
