The Japanese government has been working to increase both military spending and the military’s role beyond Japan’s borders. This has little to do with Japan asserting independence from Washington, and is more about a cash-strapped US wanting more money from Japanese taxpayers.
The data shows that many Greek workers work for long hours, and some labor data suggests the Greek economy must be fine. But a closer look shows that hard work isn't enough when many others live off the productivity of the working few.
Connecticut has introduced a new death tax. But for some reason, a blatant cash grab like this is never "greed" when a government uses violence to seize wealth. It's only greed when private sector actors want more money.
Boston joins a growing number of cities where the taxpayers decided they didn't want to deal with the massive costs of hosting the Olympic games. As a bastion of crony capitalism, however, the games are still quite popular among politicians and business "leaders."
For decades, American military strategy has amounted to little more than outspending all adversaries. Vietnam and Korea showed this strategy sometimes fails, although it often works as long as the money keeps flowing. But the financial good times won’t last forever.
Many commentators focus on immigrants when declaring that people who live off government spending should not be able to vote. However, there is no lack of longtime citizens who also have an incentive to keep the tax money flowing as long as possible.
The only thing defense spending actually defends are the profits of defense contractors.
Believing his record on economic predictions to be impeccable, Paul Krugman has declared himself "Krugtron the Invincible." Unfortunately for him, a closer look at this record leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to accurately predicting the future.
Governments don’t like it when citizens emigrate to escape high taxes and other government-imposed costs. Governments would much rather keep productive citizens and their money at home. Bigger countries find it’s much easier to keep us in.
