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John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #112 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Commonwealth Foundation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Independent Institute.

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #99 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, the Goldwater Institute, and American Legislative Exchange Council.

In this episode of the weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, managing editor and research fellow Jesse Hathaway talks with Wisconsin state representative Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), the sponsor of a new law requiring state government agencies to submit a zero-based budget plan and a budget plan in which the agency becomes more efficient but uses less taxpayer money.

John Nothdurft returns to the podcast, joining Donny Kendal for episode #29 of the In The Tank Podcast. This weekly podcast features (as always) interviews, debates, roundtable discussions, stories, and light-hearted segments on a variety of topics on the latest news. The show is available for download as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast every Friday. Today’s podcast features work from R Street, the Cascade Policy Institute, and the James Madison Institute.

In just eight years, Bitcoin and the idea of “virtual currency” have gained acceptance and use both online and in the physical world. Spread by word of mouth and other “viral” means, decentralized virtual currencies have gone from a mere thought experiment to a tangible economic reality.

This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving also is a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.

Keynesians never seem to learn. Every time an economy slows down or reverses gears and “goes negative,” in terms of growth and employment, their only answer is a call for “aggregate demand” stimulus and more government spending manipulation.

Arguably the single most successful endeavor undertaken by Congress in the past 20 years was its effort to enact significant reform of the U.S. welfare system. Even greater success is possible, with simple steps that states can take to help millions of impoverished people transition from government dependency to the freedom and self-sufficiency provided by a high-quality job.

For decades, the quality of life of the incoming generation of Americans has built on and improved on that of the previous generation. According to new data released by the United States Census Bureau, however, that is not the case for the current incoming generation, the Millennials. They have government to blame for their rotten economic conditions.

In the Hunger Games franchise of movies and young-adult novels, political power is concentrated within the Capitol; citizens there revel in pageantry and pomp while their fellow Americans suffer from the dire, impoverishing consequences of the government’s policies. That same sort of sedimentation of power and money into the nation’s capital is happening in the current-day United States.

Americans recently celebrated Independence Day—the day the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence and announced the 13 American colonies regarded themselves as sovereign states no longer part of the British Empire and subject to its rules and taxes.

President Obama seems committed to forcing the minimum wage up through federal intervention. If he succeeds, it will only damage the economy further, resulting in higher unemployment and less growth. Here are four reasons a minimum wage is a bad idea.