Trick-or-Treat at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

I’ve posted other cartoons about Obama’s class-warfare fixation, but this one seems appropriate for today. To close on a serious note, folks on the left genuinely seem to think the economy is a fixed pie and one person’s success necessarily means another person’s failure. We need to figure out ways of educating them about growth, [...]

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Humorous Halloween Tax Video

In what will probably become an annual tradition, here is the Halloween tax video I posted last year. The last 30 seconds of the three-minute video actually contain some very good economics, roughly akin to this classic cartoon. Yes, incentives matter. And since it is Halloween, these two parodies of The Candyman song (here and [...]

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Was FDR Misguided or Malicious?

Here’s an absolutely horrifying video of President Franklin Roosevelt promoting a “Second Bill of Rights” based on coercive redistribution. At first, I was going to post it and contrast it with this superb Reagan video and compare how one President’s policies kept America mired in a depression while the other implemented policies that triggered an [...]

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Mitchell’s Golden Rule

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a “Golden Rule of Fiscal Policy” that was probably a bit too wordy. Good fiscal policy exists when the private sector grows faster than the public sector, while fiscal ruin is inevitable if government spending grows faster than the productive part of the economy. In some recent speeches, [...]

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Very Snarky Jab at the Occupy-Wall-Street Crowd

I’ve posted a couple of cartoons (here and here) about Occupy Wall Street, so now it’s time for a photo. But I’m posting in this in my humor category because I’m 99 percent convinced this is a doctored image. Part of what makes it amusing, however, is that it could be true. And even though [...]

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CBO’s Witch-Doctor Economics and Gypsy Forecasting

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 percent tax rates maximize growth in the long run. About the only nice thing that [...]

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El Salvador, Greece, and American Tax Dollars: The Destructive Impact of the IMF

The Europeans have just agreed to another bailout for Greece. That’s the bad news. The good news is…well, there is no good news. Sarkozy, Merkel, and the other statists have once again failed to do the right thing and instead have decided to throw good money after bad and dig the debt hole even deeper. [...]

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Four Reasons Why Keynesian “Stimulus” Does Not Work

Professor Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University has a must-read column in today’s Wall Street Journal, beginning with what should be an obvious statement. Those who heaped high praise on Keynesian policies have grown silent as government spending has failed to bring an economic recovery. Except for a few diehards who want still more government [...]

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Political Humor: Translating English to Republicanese

Writing for the Huffington Post, some guy named Jonathan Bines does a good job of poking fun at Republicans with a GOP-to-English dictionary. His list of definitions is not quite as amusing as this video mocking libertarians (we should all learn to laugh at ourselves), but it’s still worth sharing. Here are his best entries. [...]

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Did I Lose, or Are the People of New York City Unworthy?

Folks of a certain age, who watched ABC’s Wide World of Sports, will remember the phrase “the agony of defeat.” Well, that’s what Richard Epstein and I endured Tuesday night at the Intelligence Squared debate in New York City. We were battling against two Keynesians, Mark Zandi and Cecilia Rouse, in hopes of convincing the [...]

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Tim “Turbotax” Geithner Has a British Soulmate

The Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, is infamous for conveniently forgetting to pay tax on $80,000 of income and then getting kid-glove treatment from the IRS when his crime was uncovered. Not only did Geithner avoid even a slap on the wrist, he was confirmed to head the department that includes the IRS. So [...]

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Kudos to Obama Administration for Fighting Extraterritorial European Tax Scheme

I don’t often have reason to praise the White House. But the Administration occasionally winds up fighting on the right side when dealing with the statists on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I lauded the Obama Administration two years ago when the Treasury Department was fighting against a scheme from the Europeans to [...]

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Another Reason I Despise Government

One of the reasons I’m a libertarian is that virtually all of my personal interactions with government are unpleasant. * Governments pull me over and give me tickets for trying to efficiently drive from one location to another. * Governments coerce me into filling out complicated tax forms in order to give politicians money that [...]

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Grading Perry’s Flat Tax: Some Missing Homework, but a Solid B+

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 policy as a benchmark. 1. Does the plan have a low, flat rate to minimize [...]

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The Vatican Should Try to Save Souls, not Ruin Economies

A couple of months ago, after reading an excellent column in the semi-official newspaper of the Vatican, I joked that we should send Obama to Rome for an economics lesson. I now completely retract that statement. There may be some economically astute people who write for L’Osservatore Romano, but they are offset by the economic [...]

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Republicans vs. the Free Market

Over and over again, I tell people to ignore whether politicians have a D or an R after their names. That’s because Democrats sometimes do the right thing and Republicans often do the wrong thing. My latest example of Republicans doing the wrong thing come from Florida, where GOP politicians decided that free markets should [...]

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The European Lemming

This cartoon says it all. You can find some additional great Ramirez cartoons here, here, and here.

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The Obligatory “I Told You So, You Dumb SOBs” Post about Greece

Almost two years ago, I wrote that bailing out Greece was misguided because it would dig the debt hole deeper. More recently, I wrote an I-told-you-so post that looked at my four original predictions and patted myself on the back for being accurate (not that it took any special insight to conclude that bailouts would [...]

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Debating against Obama’s So-Called Stimulus, Advocating Pro-Growth Policy

I’m going to be in New York City next week to join with Richard Epstein as we participate in an Intelligence Squared debate against Mark Zandi and Cecilia Rouse. I’m looking forward to this event because Richard Epstein is a rock star for freedom. It also gave me an opportunity to pontificate on growth issues [...]

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Should Washington Re-Inflate the Housing Bubble?

I have no idea whether George Santayana was a good philosopher, but he certainly was right when he wrote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Consider the fools in the U.S. Senate. They just voted to expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac subsidies, apparently thinking that re-inflating the housing [...]

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More “Success Stories” from the So-Called Stimulus

Wow. Even by the low standards of government, here are a couple of remarkable stories about government waste from Obama’s failed stimulus scheme. Let’s start with an example of crony capitalism. The federal government decided to subsidize the wealthy shareholders of company working on an electric car. That’s not too surprising. After all, politicians have [...]

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Social Security Administration Sides with “Adult Baby,” Dumps Diaper Contents on Taxpayers

I must not be very bright. Even after decades of experience in Washington, I still have this naive belief that bureaucrats and politicians will occasionally do the right thing – even if for no other reason other than to cover their rear ends after being caught doing something flagrantly wasteful and reprehensible. So when Senator [...]

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In One Chart, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the European Fiscal Crisis

I would have structured this flowchart differently, for reasons I discuss in this post, but this is pretty good picture of why Europe is in trouble. They say all roads lead to Rome, and this flowchart shows all roads lead to a banking crisis (see this post to understand why). But not all banking crises [...]

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Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama: Separated at Birth?

Very clever. The person who put together this video obviously had a lot of time on his hands, but he also deserves praise for coming up with something that is both amusing and eerily disturbing. I came of age during the Carter years, and this video accurately captures the moralizing and hectoring tone of Carter’s [...]

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A “Solyndra Rule” to Guide Federal Budget Policy

Just yesterday, I proposed a “Golden Rule” for fiscal policy, based on the simple notion that the burden of government spending should grow slower than the private sector. And regular readers know about my narcissistic attempt to publicize “Mitchell’s Law” as a way of illustrating how politicians create problems and then use those problems to [...]

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Is Ron Paul Going Soft on Big Government?

I gave this post a tongue-in-cheek title because Congressman Paul has produced a very good budget plan. Which is to be expected since he is the candidate closest to my views according to the Reason political quiz (though I do criticize him  when appropriate). You can read it on Congressman Paul’s campaign site and here’s [...]

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Howard Stern vs Occupy Wall Street

In one short interview, the folks at the Howard Stern Show turn the Occupy-Wall-Street deadbeats into objects of scorn and derision. There is a bit of R-rated language, so you are forewarned. While the clip is amusing, let’s contemplate a serious point. For two years, the establishment press has been trying – with increasing desperation [...]

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What’s the Difference Between an American Politician, a Greek Politician, and an Anguillan Politician?

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, sort of like, “A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar…” But I have a serious point to make. I’m currently in Anguilla (yes, this is just one of the sacrifices I make in the fight for liberty), where I just gave a speech to [...]

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“Capitalism without Bankruptcy Is Like Religion without Hell”

After any news appearance, I torment myself by watching the clip and telling myself I should have said something differently or raised a different point. But I’m actually happy with this appearance on Fox Business News because I (hopefully) explained the difference between wealth that is honestly accumulated and loot that is obtained through government [...]

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The Simple Solution to the European Fiscal Crisis

The welfare states of Europe are in deep trouble. Decades of over-taxing and over-spending have sapped economic vitality and produced high levels of debt. The high debt levels, by themselves, might not be a problem if European governments implemented good policy. After all, debt was even higher in many nations after World War II than [...]

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