I’ve commented many times about wasteful government spending, including Social Security bureaucrats spending $700 thousand to party at a luxury resort, HUD bureaucrats giving huge subsidies for welfare recipients to live in upscale neighborhoods, rampant fraud in the unemployment insurance program, and tax dollars being used to subsidize a grown man wearing diapers and living […]
read more...By European standards, Germany is in pretty good shape. There’s a very large welfare state and the tax burden is quite onerous, both of which hinder growth, but Germany has been more responsible than the United States in recent years. And while this may be damning with faint praise, this modest bit of fiscal discipline […]
read more...More than two years ago, I explained in a TV interview that the looters and moochers should be careful that they don’t kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. After all, parasites need a healthy host. The collapse of Europe’s welfare states should be a wake-up call for these people, but that hasn’t stopped […]
read more...Most people have a vague understanding that America has a huge long-run fiscal problem. They’re right, though they probably don’t realize the seriousness of that looming crisis. Here’s what you need to know: America’s fiscal crisis is actually a spending crisis, and that spending crisis is driven by entitlements. More specifically, the vast majority of […]
read more...bout a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals. What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part […]
read more...As demonstrated by the new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, there are five key lessons to learn from the fiscal crisis in Europe. Unfortunately, Europe’s despicable political class has not learned from their mistakes. They are not taking the simple and obvious steps that are needed to address the problems of spendthrift […]
read more...I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation […]
read more...Appearances can be deceiving. I saw an article with a blaring headline that warmed my heart: “France’s Sarkozy Eyes Welfare Rethink, Fraud Clampdown.” Could it be, I thought, that the political elite finally realized that the welfare state was the wrong model? Had they finally realized, as demonstrated by these cartoons, that it was foolish […]
read more...I’ve previously posted about the communist government of Cuba cutting taxes and the CEO of Coca-Cola saying that communist China has a more business-friendly climate than the United States. Having grown up during the Cold War, I still have a hard time believing my eyes when I read stories like these. But those examples pale […]
read more...Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting the government grow faster than the private sector. As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse. But that’s the good news – at least relatively […]
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