by Dan Mitchell | Sep 22, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
The world’s best welfare state arguably is Finland. Yes, the burden of government spending is enormous and the tax system is stifling, but the nation gets extremely high scores for rule of law and human liberty. Moreover, it is one of the world’s most laissez-faire...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 20, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
I argued last year that leftists should be nice to rich people because upper-income taxpayers finance the vast majority of the American welfare state according to government data. Needless to say, my comment about being “nice” was somewhat sarcastic. But I was making...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 19, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
Most economic policy debates are predictable. Folks on the left urge higher taxes and bigger government while folks on the right advocate lower taxes and smaller government (thanks to “public choice” incentives, many supposedly pro-market politicians don’t follow...
by Dan Mitchell | Aug 8, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
According to leftists like Bernie Sanders, European nations have wonderfully generous welfare states financed by high tax rates on the rich. They’re partly right. There are very large welfare states in Europe (though I wouldn’t use “wonderfully” and “generous” to...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 8, 2017 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
There are a lot of positive things to be said about Norway. Most impressive, it is the world’s #2-ranked nation for high-quality rule of law. It is in the top quartile of countries for economic liberty. When measuring non-fiscal factors, it is in the top-10 percent...
