Less productive, growing more slowly over time, and more likely to fall back into recession – Western Europe is a bad example, not a model, for America. Only for those erroneously seeing an economy as a fixed pie could Western Europe’s redistribution schemes make any sense. See, Do We Really Want to Mimic Western Europe’s…

There’s a short, simple column from Robert Samuelson on the Greek financial crisis as an example of a failed welfare state. Well worth reading. See Greece and the Welfare State in Ruins.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, there’s a troubling story from Jonathan Weisman entitled, Deficit to Hit All-Time High. The situation is so alarming that a scholar from a left-leaning think tank is alarmed: Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert at the Brookings Institution, criticized the president’s goal – a deficit of 3% of GDP long…

Wisconsin’s a smaller state, but she ranks in the top ten in property taxes, along with states with troubled economies like Illinois and California. The Wisconsin State Journal, in a story posted this afternoon, entitled, “Wisconsin ninth in median property taxes,” notes that “Wisconsin’s median real estate tax paid for 2008 was $2,963…” compared “…to…

In the post immediately before this one, I posted an editorial cartoon from Lisa Benson criticizing the federal administration’s decision to impose a tariff on Chinese tires. It’s a foolish decision — the tires are made more inexpensively than alternatives, and save consumers money. The case for free trade — free and unrestricted markets across…