Government has a negative impact on the economy through spending, taxes, and its budget deficits. The most hard-hitting impact does not come through taxes, as conventional wisdom suggests, but through spending—spending governed by ideological preferences, which determine what money is spent, where, and when.
Of the three dominant types of welfare states, it is not easy to extract one that would be palatable to both social conservatives and social democrats—it is possible though. The path to a compromise can be found by navigating the dynamics between political methodology and political theory.
Referring to Germany’s refusal to let British aircraft fly military supplies through German air space, Senator Sasse suggested that the German government had returned to a pre-NATO situation.
While Finland has already declared that it is not pursuing a NATO membership, Sweden still remains open to the idea. So long as the possibility remains open in the current international political climate, it undeservedly transplants the Ukrainian struggle for independence onto the Nordic scene.
Two factors contribute to the decline in the consolidated budget deficit: the tapering of pandemic-related stimulus spending and the gradual return of economic activity to pre-pandemic normal.
A single-payer system is nothing more than a promise of health care. If and when you actually get health care is a different matter, yet its American proponents continue to ignore this problem in Europe, fantasizing that it will not come to America.
New speech-restriction laws, whether national or at the EU level, would amplify a disturbing trend underway in Europe, where the right to free expression is gradually being replaced with a new legal default. What speech is not explicitly permitted, is banned.
The euro itself is only part of the failure. An entire structure of government institutions, laws, and even constitutional provisions were erected around it in order to secure its success. It all looked impressive two decades ago; today, the structure itself, from the European Central Bank (ECB), to the so-called Stability and Growth Pact, is a package of sordid evidence that even under democratic governments, central economic planning is a bad idea.
To suggest that the scientific community can reach irrefutable consensus on anything but basic conceptual and axiomatic structures of a scientific discipline is to dismiss the most sacred process of the scholarly endeavor itself: the peer review process. Nothing guarantees the integrity of scientific progress like the free practice of scholarly thought.
High and rising inflation has put yet more pressure on the Turkish lira, but instead of making the hard choices to curb inflation, the response from President Erdogan’s government is likely to aggravate the situation.
The common currency was a gigantic economic experiment, an application of political preferences rather than the product of sound scholarly research. As is always the case with grand government plans, for every problem they solve a new one is created.
President Trump is no longer considered guilty of having caused the storming of the Capitol. He is now being accused of not having stopped it. This is not a shift in the nuance of the narrative regarding his role: it is a substantial retreat.
