by Dan Mitchell | Feb 5, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Europe, Regulations, Welfare and Entitlements
So far this decade, I’ve written at least nine columns (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) showing that the United States is out-performing Europe. Since I endlessly complain about bad policy in...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 24, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
Back in 2019, I compared OECD nations based on the total burden of social welfare spending as a share of economic output. France was the worst of the worst, unsurprisingly, followed by Finland and Belgium. That column also differentiated by types of...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 26, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
Scandinavian nations are not socialist, at least if we’re using the technical definition (government ownership, central planning, and price controls). But those countries do have big welfare states. And that means stifling tax burdens. And those harsh taxes...
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 4, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Education, Health Care, Welfare and Entitlements
To augment my four-part series on the economics of government spending, here’s a video from Prager University explaining how big government doesn’t work. The video, narrated by Professor Joshua6 Rauh of Stanford, highlights three major types of spending and...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 2, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
One of Margaret Thatcher’s famous observations was that socialist governments fail because they inevitably run out of other people’s money. If I’m in a pedantic mood, I will nit-pick that statement by pointing out that she should have...
