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...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 21, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Welfare and Entitlements
Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office issued a new 10-year fiscal forecast showing spending, revenues, and red ink between 2025 and 2034. As these examples show, almost all of the resulting headlines focused on deficits and...
by Dan Mitchell | Jun 4, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, Welfare and Entitlements
The main argument for smaller government – from an economic perspective – is that more resources are left in the productive sector of the economy and this leads to faster growth and higher living standards. This is a reason why the United...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 28, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, Welfare and Entitlements
I already shared my thoughts about the value-added tax when discussing fiscal policy with an economist at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise. Here’s some of what I said about tax progressivity and the welfare state. The bottom line is that the American tax...
by Dan Mitchell | Apr 20, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Welfare and Entitlements
To show that living standards are much higher in the United States than they are in Europe, I periodically share OECD data on average individual consumption (2012, 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2022). All of which implies that European...
