What’s the Best Way of Achieving Good Fiscal Policy?

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 27, 2012 | Blogs, Tax Competition, Taxation

The half-joking response to the question in the title of this post is that policymakers should look at what’s happening in poorly run jurisdictions such as California, France, Illinois, and Greece – and then do just the opposite. In other words, steer clear of...

Debunking Obama’s Flawed Assertions on Tax Deductions and Corporate Welfare

by Dan Mitchell | Oct 5, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation

In a violation of the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, my brutal overseers at the Cato Institute required me to watch Wednesday’s debate (you can see what Cato scholars said by clicking here). But I will admit that it was good to...

It’s Wrong for Federal Tax Deductions to Encourage Bad Fiscal Policy by State and Local Governments

by Dan Mitchell | Sep 30, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, States, Taxation

I have a handful of simple rules for good tax policy. Keep government small, since it’s impossible to have a reasonable tax system with a bloated welfare state. Keep tax rates low to minimize penalties against income, production, and wealth creation. Since capital...

Spending Cuts and Tax Cuts Should Be an All-of-the-Above Option, Not an Either-Or Choice

by Dan Mitchell | Aug 31, 2012 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation

I’m in Slovenia where I just finished indoctrinating educating a bunch of students on the importance of Mitchell’s Golden Rule as a means of restraining the burden of government spending. And I emphasized that the fiscal problem in Europe is the size of government,...

Romney is Right that You Can Lower Tax Rates and Reduce Tax Preferences without Hurting the Middle Class

by Dan Mitchell | Aug 29, 2012 | Blogs, Economics, Flat Tax, Laffer Curve, Taxation

Even though I’m not a Romney fan, I sometimes feel compelled to defend him against leftist demagoguery. But instead of writing about tax havens, as I’ve done in the past, today we’re going to look at incremental tax reform. The left has been loudly asserting that the...