The golden rules

Dan Mitchell has come up with simple but effective rules which should be adhered to by every single nation on this planet.

Firstly, his golden rule:

 

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.

Secondly, Mitchell’s law:

 

This term, which I am modestly calling Mitchell’s Law, describes what happens when government intervention (Fannie and Freddie, for example, or Medicare and Medicaid) causes problems in a particular market (a housing bubble or a third-party payer crisis), which leads the politicians to impose more misguided intervention (bailouts or Obamacare).