Dan Mitchell - Page 7

Price fixing is illegal in the private sector, but unfortunately there are no rules against schemes by politicians to create oligopolies in order to prop up bad government policy. The latest example comes from the bureaucrats at the International Monetary

Being an American citizen is an honor in many ways, but it is a huge millstone around the neck for highly successful investors and entrepreneurs because of an oppressive and complex tax system. This is particularly true for those based

Like a good peasant, I have already filed an extension, so I am at least temporarily compliant with the friendly people at the IRS. But since it is tax day, perhaps a slight bit of criticism of the tax code

My all-time favorite former intern, Hiwa Alaghebandian, has just narrated a new Economics 101 video about the cost of the tax code for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. I won’t spoil the surprise by giving the details, but you

My post last week about the flat tax generated a lot of friendly comment and email, but also some pointed questions about whether a national sales tax such as the Fair Tax would be a better approach. Since I’ve written

America’s biggest fiscal challenge is excessive government spending. The public sector is far too large today and it is projected to get much bigger in coming decades. But the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code is second on the list

My previous post about using tax competition to restrain greedy and bloated government generated a lot of email, much of it focused on whether so-called tax havens are good or bad. This is a challenging issue. In an ideal world,

So where do we go from here now that Obama has succeeded in pushing through a corrupt and bloated healthcare bill? Let’s start with some good news. This is not the end of the world. If this was 1920, Obamacare

President Obama and congressional Democrats are claiming that a giant new entitlement program will reduce red ink. It’s tempting to laugh and dismiss such a preposterous claim. After all, these are the same people who told us that squandering $787

In this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a Swedish economics student makes three important points. 1. Sweden became a rich nation in the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s by relying a free markets

When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to to the

President Obama is proposing a series of major tax increases. His budget envisions higher tax rates on personal income, increased double taxation of dividends and capital gains, and a big increase in the death tax. His health care plan includes

A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison

The University of Basel’s Institute of Governance recently published a map showing the nations most linked to dirty money. What made the map interesting is that only one of the 28 nations listed was a so-called tax haven, thus exposing

Did Republicans lose in 2006 and 2008 because they were too far to the left or too far to the right? And which approach should they adopt if they want to regain power in 2010 and 2012? Some people think

Barack Obama wants higher tax rates on the so-called rich, including steeper levies on income, capital gains, dividends, and even death! Along with other greedy politicians in Washington, he acts as if successful taxpayers are like sheep meekly awaiting slaughter.

The Cato Institute’s Isabel Santa uses school choice as an example of why competition is better than government-imposed monopolies. The video explains that government schools cost more and deliver less, which is exactly what one might expect when there is

If you want to get depressed or angry, the New York Times has an article celebrating the effort by politicians at all levels of government to lure more people into the food stamp program. New York City is running ads

The fiscal crisis in Greece is fascinating political theater, in part because the Balkan nation is a leading indicator for what will probably happen in many other countries. The most puzzling feature of the crisis is the assumption in other

Politicians in Washington have come up with something far more impressive than turning lead into gold or water into wine. Using self-serving budget rules, they can increase the burden of government spending and say they are cutting taxes instead. This

The new budget from the White House contains all sorts of land mines for taxpayers, which is not surprising considering the President wants to extract another $1.3 trillion over the next ten years. One of the worst proposals targets American

The Office of Management and Budget has released the President’s FY2011 budget and the Congressional Budget Office has released its semi-annual Budget and Economic Outlook. Much of the coverage of these documents has focused on deficit numbers. This is not

This new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains how last year’s so-called stimulus was a flop – and also reveals why politicians are pushing for another big-government spending bill. [youtube 985C0uh1HKA] Interestingly, since last year’s stimulus was

A Swiss court just threw a wrench in the gears of an IRS effort to impose bad US tax law on an extraterritorial basis, ruling that UBS does not have to hand over data to the American tax authorities. This

According to a Washington Post story, Obama wants to be the anti-Reagan, a President who permanently changes the American people’s attitude about big government. Obama’s efforts to make statism popular, however, are not exactly working out as he hoped. According

The late George Stigler, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, is famous in part because of his work on “regulatory capture,” which occurs when interest groups use the coercive power of government to thwart competition and undeservedly line their

Writing for Forbes, Bruce Bartlett puts forth an interesting hypothesis that healthcare legislation could have been made better (hopefully he meant to write “less destructive”) if the GOP had been willing to compromise with Democrats: Democrats desperately wanted a bipartisan

Andrew Sullivan posted the following chart, which he found in National Geographic, and he noted, with considerable justification, that this was evidence of an insane and inefficient healthcare system in America. Sullivan-Healthcare – The chart shows that America spends a

Even though politicians already have flushed $400 billion down the rathole, the Obama Administration has announced that it will now give unlimited amounts of our money to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-created mortgage companies. While

Here are a few stories to bring holiday cheer for taxpayers. First, we have an Associated Press report that several hundred thousand federal bureaucrats have serious tax delinquencies. The Department of Housing and Urban Development always ranks high on the

Since Senators engaged in open extortion and bribery to enact Reid’s government-run healthcare plan, it is hardly newsworthy that Washington is riddled with corruption. But the magnitude of sleaze is probably far greater than most people realize. There is a

Reckless spending increases under both Bush and Obama have resulted in unprecedented deficits, which is the reason for boosting the nation’s debt limit by an astounding $1.8 trillion. Government borrowing has become such a big issue that some politicians are

German politicians apparently have been hot on the trail of evil evaders who did not pay tax on coffee ordered over the Internet. To address this terrible crisis, the government spent 800,000 euro and tracked down 4000 dangerous criminals. Shockingly,

We’ve learned that Keynesianism does not make sense and that Obama’s so-called stimulus was misguided. In the final installment of this three-part series, let’s discuss the policies that actually would improve economic performance. As this video explains, both Economic Freedom

President Obama claimed a $787 billion Keynesian spending bill would keep the joblessness rate at 8 percent or below, so it’s no surprise that the White House is feeling defensive now that the unemployment rate is 10 percent. The supposedly

The White House recently began claiming that the “Recovery Act” had “created or saved” 640,000-plus jobs. This was a political mistake, since the “jobs saved” measure allows for creative accounting. But the White House also erred by providing (supposed) details,