The government is more and more becoming like a leviathan, a big beast, greedy for our money. Dr. Daniel Mitchell, the chief tax analyst at Cato Institute, will discuss how to starve the beast at a meeting jointly organised by RNH and the Icelandic Taxpayers’ Association, Monday 4 November, 12–13, in Askja, the House of Natural Sciences at the University of Iceland, Room N-131. Dr. Mitchell will discuss the recent increase of government spending in the wake of the international financial crisis. He will also describe the logic of the Laffer Curve which has created some controversy in Iceland: whereby government revenue will actually decrease with higher tax rates, as the tax basis gets eroded.
Mitchell’s lecture forms a part of the project “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”, which RNH organises in cooperation with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, whose patron was the late Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. Erla Osk Asgeirsdottir, MPA and market manager at Handpoint, chairs the meeting which is open to all, with admission free.
Daniel Mitchell received his MA. in economics from the University of Georgia and his Ph.D. from George Mason University in Virginia. He worked for the Senate Finance Committee and Heritage Foundation, before becoming a Senior Scholar at the Cato Institute in Wasington DC, specialising in tax matters. He has written a book about the flat tax, and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other newspapers. He is a frequent visitor to Iceland and has published papers on taxation in Iceland. He also often participates in television debates, for example about taxes on the rich:
Here he discusses tax havens:
Here he appears before a U. S. Senate committee on public spending and public debt:
