by Dan Mitchell | Dec 10, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There was a book last decade by Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, that asked why lower-income voters in the state didn’t vote for greater levels of redistribution. The author claimed these voters were sidetracked by cultural issues, which may very well be...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 8, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
When I argue with my statist friends about the proper size and scope of government, they accuse me of not wanting public services. My typical response is to explain that I am a strong supporter of markets as the method to get high-quality roads, schools,...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 24, 2018 | Blogs, Economics, Free Market
My favorite publication every year is Economic Freedom of the World. It’s filled with data on fiscal policy, regulatory policy, trade policy, monetary policy, and quality of governance for 162 jurisdictions, and it provides an unbiased way of gauging the degree to...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 12, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
One of the more elementary observations about economics is that a nation’s prosperity is determined in part by the quantity of quality of labor and capital. These “factors of production” are combined to generate national income. I frequently grouse that punitive tax...
by Sven R. Larson | Sep 17, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, Welfare and Entitlements
I rarely get surprised these days by the pervasive economic illiteracy on the left. Yet precisely that happened when a friend sent me a link to an article in Forbes Magazine from back in April. The article claims that: Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S....
