Dan Mitchell - Page 2

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

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

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

Since I’ve written before about Canada’s remarkable period of fiscal restraint during the 1990s, I am very pleased to see that the establishment press is finally giving some attention to what our northern neighbors did to reduce the burden of

Some people have asked why I’m so agitated about the possibility that Republicans may acquiesce to tax increases as part of the Supercommittee negotiations. Rather than get into a lengthy discourse about the proper role of the federal government or

I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity,

Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an attack on the flat tax – and I was happy

I’ve always been proud of my Irish heritage, but now I’m having to reconsider. As is so often the case when something goes awry, the blame belongs to a politician (this Craig Ferguson joke is right on the mark). Michael

I’m not a fan of international bureaucracies. I’ve criticized the United Nations for wanting global taxes. I’ve condemned the International Monetary Fund for promoting bigger government. I’ve even excoriated the largely unknown Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for misguided regulations

I’m baffled by stupid Republicans (sorry to be redundant). Some GOPers have agreed to put taxes on the table. Not surprisingly, Democrats are praising them for this preemptive surrender, patting these Republicans on the head for being good little lapdogs.

Commenting on Supercommittee deliberations last month, I asked whether Republicans will choose the real budgetary savings of a sequester or surrender to a tax hike. Well, it appears that the GOP likes being known as the Stupid Party and is

One of my frustrating missions in life is to educate policy makers on the Laffer Curve. This means teaching folks on the left that tax policy affects incentives to earn and report taxable income. As such, I try to explain,

Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting the government grow faster than the private sector. As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are

Last week in New York City, during my Intelligence Squared debate about stimulus, I pointed out that Germany is doing better than the United States and explained that they largely avoided any Bush/Obama Keynesian spending binges. One of my opponents

I have sometimes wondered whether it is accurate to say that Republicans are the “Stupid Party.” We’ll soon know the answer to that question. As part of the debt limit agreement, the politicians agreed to set up a “Super Committee”

I’ve criticized the Congressional Budget Office for generating biased and inaccurate numbers. These are the clowns, after all, who say deficit spending stimulates the economy in the short run but they also rely on a model which seemingly predicts 100

Governor Rick Perry of Texas has announced a plan, which he outlines in today’s Wall Street Journal, to replace the corrupt and inefficient internal revenue code with a flat tax. Let’s review his proposal, using the principles of good tax

The Laffer Curve is the simple notion that higher tax rates don’t necessarily generate as much loot as politicians expect because taxpayers have less incentive to earn and/or report income. And it works in both directions. Lower tax rates don’t

The folks from the Koch Institute put together a great video a couple of months ago looking at why some nations are rich and others are poor. That video looked at the relationship between economic freedom and various indices that

I like the overall approach of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. As I recently wrote, it focuses on lower tax rates, elimination of double taxation, and repeal of corrupt and inefficient loopholes. But I included a very important caveat. The

The budget fights this year began with the “shutdown” battle, followed by the Ryan budget and then the debt limit. These fights have mostly led to uninspiring kiss-your-sister outcomes, which is hardly surprising given divided government. Now the crowd in

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity has released another “Economics 101” video, and this one has a very powerful message about the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty. As explained by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum, the various

Today, October 1, is the first day of the 2012 fiscal year. And if you’re wondering why America’s economy seems to have a hangover (this cartoon is a perfect illustration), it’s because politicians had a huge party with our money

One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t

Earlier this year, President Obama’s IRS proposed a regulation that would force banks in America to report any interest they pay to accounts owned by non-resident aliens (that’s the technical term for foreigners who don’t live in the U.S.). What

Whether I’m criticizing Warren Buffett’s innumeracy or explaining how to identify illegitimate loopholes, I frequently write about the perverse impact of double taxation. By this, I mean the tendency of politicians to impose multiple layers of taxation on income that

When asked to pick my most frustrating issue, I could list things from my policy field such as class warfare or income redistribution. But based on all the speeches and media interviews I do, which periodically venture into other areas,

In a move that some are calling QE3, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will engage in a policy called “the twist” – selling short-term bonds and buying long-term bonds in hopes of artificially reducing long-term interest rates. If

We have some good news and bad news on jobs. The good news is that an AFP news story says the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.2 percent. The bad news (from the U.S. perspective) is that the article was

It’s hard to keep track of all the tax hikes that President Obama is proposing, but it’s very simple to recognize his main target – the evil, nasty, awful people known as the rich. Or, as Obama identifies them, the

Wow, this is remarkable. The alternative minimum tax (AMT) is one of the most-hated features of the tax code. It is such a nightmare of complexity that even Democrats routinely have supported “patches” and “band-aids” to protect millions of additional

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may be most famous in the United States for cheating on his taxes (you can even buy a t-shirt to acknowledge his tax dodging), but he’s becoming a punch line in the rest of the world