by Dan Mitchell | May 14, 2022 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
When the Commerce Department announced in February that the United States had a record trade deficit for 2021, I shared this video to help make the point that those trade numbers were that year’s “least important economic news.” The main thing to understand is that a...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 11, 2022 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
Way back in 2010, I explained that Paul Krugman was wrong to think that wars were good for the economy. Indeed, he was more wrong than usual. The additional spending for the military isn’t “stimulus,” so his usual Keynesian argument was misguided....
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 5, 2022 | Blogs, Economics, Trade
In Part I of this series, I pointed out that Biden’s plethora of proposed handouts and subsidies would lead to higher prices and more inefficiency. And in Part II, I explained that his discussion of inflation was embarrassingly inaccurate. In today’s column, we’re...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 1, 2022 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
It’s an annual tradition (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, etc) to list a handful of things that I hope might happen in the upcoming year, as well as the things I fear may happen. Sadly, since I understand the economics of “public choice” (something...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 3, 2021 | Blogs, Free Market, Trade
I’ve shared several videos (here, here, here, and here) that use rigorous data to show that grinding poverty and severe material deprivation was the norm for humanity – until capitalism gained a foothold a few hundred years ago. Fortunately, as free...