Tag Archives : Statism
More Entrepreneurs Say “Au Revoir” to the Administration Fiscale, Escape France’s Confiscatory Tax Regime
As a general rule, it’s not right to take pleasure at the misfortune of others. But I think we’re allowed an exception to that Schadenfreude rule when the “others” are greedy politicians pursuing spiteful policies. We want the political elite to suffer misfortune because of our desire to promote freedom and prosperity for ordinary people. […]
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Will Growing Dependency and Erosion of Social Capital Turn America into Europe?
One of my favorite political cartoons is this Michael Ramirez gem showing President Obama following the European lemmings over the cliff of statism. But this isn’t a laughing matter. As shown in this remarkable graph on global living standards, Americans enjoy significantly more consumption than their European counterparts. And here’s another set of charts showing […]
read more...George Orwell Surely Would Be Amused by the Statolatry in the United Kingdom
In previous posts, I’ve expressed pessimism about the future of the United Kingdom, largely because all political parties have a statist mentality. I criticized Gordon Brown, the former Labor Party Prime Minister, for being a compulsive redistributionist, big spender, and taxaholic. But nothing’s really changed under Tory leadership. David Cameron is a vacuous statist, undermining […]
read more...The United States Ranks 7th in Comprehensive New “Freedom Index”
I’ve always been a big fan of Economic Freedom of the World because it provides a balanced and neutral measure of which nations do best in providing free markets and small government. And I like it even when it gives me bad news. It’s somewhat depressing, after all, to read that the United States has […]
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What Was the Most Tragic Policy Development of 2012?
I’m not sure I could pick out a significant victory for human freedom in 2012. Maybe I’m missing something, but the only good policy that’s even worth mentioning was the decision in Wisconsin to rein in the special privileges and excessive compensation for government workers. But there definitely have been lots of sad developments. The […]
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A Journalist’s First-Hand Report on the Corrupt Secrecy of an International Bureaucracy
As a taxpayer, I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies. They consume a lot of money, pay themselves extravagant (and tax-free!) salaries, and generally promote statist policies. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a prime example. Originally created for benign purposes such as gathering statistics, it now is a bloated bureaucracy […]
read more...Now that the Election Is Over, the Washington Post Admits that the Obama Recovery Has Been Terrible
I agree that Obama inherited a crappy economy, and I think it is silly to assert that he bears any responsibility for the severity of the 2007-2009 recession. But it is very fair to hold him responsible for what’s happened since the recession ended. I’ve cited data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve on both employment […]
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Supporters Urge Romney to Announce that He Intends to Reverse the Statist Policies of Obama…and Bush
People in the political world say that President Obama threw Secretary of State Clinton under the bus in an attempt to protect himself from political fallout from Libya. I don’t follow those issues, so I can’t comment about the veracity of that charge, but I find it very interesting that some conservatives are urging Mitt […]
read more...My Critique of Biden’s Class Warfare…and a Very Compelling Argument from A Guy Who Escaped Communism
I talked a couple of days ago to Neil Cavuto about whether the Obama Administration is slightly modifying its class-warfare tax policy. As you can see, I’m not overly fixated on the parsing of Biden’s comments since I’m against higher tax rates for anyone. And my takeaway message from the segment is that we need […]
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Another Push for Global Taxation from the United Nations
I spoke at the United Nations back in May, explaining that more government was the wrong way to help the global economy. But I guess I’m not very persuasive. The bureaucrats have just released a new report entitled, “In Search of New Development Finance.” As you can probably guess, what they’re really searching for is […]
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