by Dan Mitchell | Jun 3, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
Illinois is a mess. Taxes and spending already are too high, and huge unfunded liabilities point to an even darker future. Simply stated, politicians and government employee unions have created an unholy alliance to extract as much money as possible from the state’s...
by Dan Mitchell | May 17, 2017 | Blogs, Economics, Laffer Curve, Taxation
As far as I’m concerned, no sentient human being could look at what happened in the United States in the 1980s and not agree that high tax rates on upper-income taxpayers are foolish and self-destructive. Not only did the economy grow faster after Reagan lowered...
by Dan Mitchell | May 12, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
As I’ve written before, our fight to restrain the size and scope of government will be severely hamstrung – perhaps even mortally wounded – if the crowd in Washington ever succeeds in getting a value-added tax as a new source of revenue. This is why many statists are...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 11, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Free Market, Government Spending, Taxation
The recipe for growth and prosperity isn’t very complicated. Adam Smith provided a very simple formula back in the 1700s. For folks who prefer a more quantitative approach, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World uses dozens of variables to rank nations...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 9, 2017 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation
To pick the state with the best tax policy, the first step is to identify the ones with no income tax and then look at other variables to determine which one deserves the top ranking. For what it’s worth, I put South Dakota at the top. Picking the state with the worst...
