Dan Mitchell

Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent. Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax rates are punitive, folks earn and report less taxable

One year ago, I wrote about how the French government was getting unexpected additional revenues following the implementation of lower tax rates. This is the Laffer Curve in action, and it’s happening again in France, only this time because the

I’ve already bragged that the Cato Institute is America’s best think tank, highlighting the fact that we took the lead in battling against Obama’s faux stimulus at a time when many were dispirited and reluctant to fight big government. I’m

I’ve already bragged that the Cato Institute is America’s best think tank, highlighting the fact that we took the lead in battling against Obama’s faux stimulus at a time when many were dispirited and reluctant to fight big government. I’m

I’ve written a couple of times about the Food Stamp program, citing ridiculous examples of waste, fraud, and abuse. These include: Using food stamps to buy luxury coffee at Starbucks. Buying steaks and lobster with food stamps. The Obama Administration

The German Chancellor and French President have put together a plan to boost growth. Sounds like a good goal, but what specifically are they proposing? Some of the obvious ideas include: Lowering tax rates to boost incentives for productive behavior.

I don’t blame the Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position. I’m mystified, though, why some

I’ve written several times about a proposed IRS regulation that would force American banks to put foreign law above U.S. law. I’ve repeatedly warned that the scheme, which would force financial institutions to report the deposit interest they pay to

In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, I explained why Mitt Romney’s interest in a value-added tax is deeply troubling. One of my key points was that the VAT is a money machine for big government. But don’t

Earlier this week, I explained why Mitt Romney is a Republican version of Barack Obama. His transgressions include being open to a value-added tax, a less-than-stellar record on healthcare, weakness on Social Security reform, an anemic list of proposed budget

I’m not a big fan of Mitt Romney. I hammered him the day before Christmas for being open to a value-added tax, and I’ve criticized him in previous posts for his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I write about insanely stupid government policies. But I know I get more motivated to fight big government. How can anyone want to give more money and power to politicians, for

Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has a column in the Wall Street Journal that argues government spending isn’t too high. That’s obviously a silly assertion, as I explain here, here, and here, but

I did a debate on income inequality for PBS but haven’t written much about the issue because I think it is a misguided diversion. One frustrating aspect of this debate is that folks on the left genuinely seem to think

My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously

Last year, I came up with a saying that “Bad Government Policy Begets More Bad Government Policy” and labeled it “Mitchell’s Law” during a bout of narcissism. There are lots of examples of this phenomenon, such as the misguided War

I’ve written before about whether California is the Greece of America, in part because of crazy policies such as overpaid bureaucrats and expensive forms of political correctness, And we all know that California has one of the nation’s greediest governments,

There’s been a lot of discussion about Mitt Romney’s appeal – or lack thereof – among supporters of limited government. To put it mildly, many libertarians and conservatives are underwhelmed by his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social

One hopes that the dictator of North Korea suffered greatly before he died. After all, his totalitarian and communist (pardon the redundancy) policies caused untold death and misery. But let’s try to learn an economics lesson. In a previous post,

I’m not a big fan of Senator Schumer of New York. As I’ve noted before, he’s a doctrinaire statist who wants the government to have control over just about every aspect of our lives. But that describes a lot of

I’ve commented many times about the misguided big-government policies of both Hoover and FDR, so I can say with considerable admiration that this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity packs an amazing amount of solid info into

Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece,

To be blunt, I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But my animosity isn’t because OECD bureaucrats threatened to have me arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail. Instead, I don’t like the Paris-based

About a week ago, I wrote that people in western nations need the freedom to own guns just in case there are riots, chaos, and social disarray when welfare states collapse. Much to my surprise and pleasure, this resulted in