All Posts Tagged With: "deficit spending"
Keynesianism Doesn’t Mean Bigger Government?
The debate over what John Maynard Keynes “really” meant by the theories he put forward in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money has been going on almost since it was published in 1936. The release of the second Hayek-Keynes hip-hop video brought this debate back to a boil. For example, in a May [...]
30Nov2011 | Steven Horwitz | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Threat Is in the Spending
The lack of a plan to control government spending poses a much greater threat to America’s credit standing than uncertainty over whether the debt limit will be raised.
6Jul2011 | Christopher Lingle | 22 comments | ContinuedDefault in the Future
An economist makes a persuasive case that the powers that be will decide a default on the government’s debt is the best available alternative.
1Jul2011 | Sheldon Richman | 20 comments | ContinuedEarth to New York Times: Governments Are Broke
The problem, the Times says, is that government does not tax people enough, nor does it spend enough money.
9Mar2011 | William L. Anderson | 19 comments | ContinuedCan America Afford an Empire?
Fiscally speaking, the U.S. government has been running a disorderly house for some time. That makes the fiscal crisis in Greece an uneasy portent for Americans (as Steven Horwitz points out in our July/August issue). Just contemplate some of the numbers. The total federal debt is nearly $13 trillion, $8.6 trillion of which is held [...]
22Sep2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedHow to Create the Illusion of Low Taxes
To the surprise of opponents of big government, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates that taxes at all levels of government take only 9.2 percent of our income, the lowest rate since Harry Truman was president. USA Today and various news-media personalities, like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, have used this statistic to hammer [...]
22Sep2010 | D.W. MacKenzie | 1 comment | ContinuedCan America Afford an Empire?
The fiscal question is whether, in the face of the huge national debt and multiyear trillion-dollar budget deficits, we can afford a “defense” establishment more befitting an empire than a republic.
9Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 12 comments | ContinuedGibberish at the G-20
The headline out of the G-20 summit is that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the “wealthiest of the Group of 20 countries said they would halve their government deficits by the year 2013 and ‘stabilize’ their debt loads by 2016….” But this didn’t prevent President Obama from urging the assembled government heads to [...]
28Jun2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat does spending “freeze” mean anyway?
Update: See also Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch for a healthy dose of reality. First I think we have to agree that a discretionary spending freeze would be a step in the right direction. If Obama follows through on this promise we should be willing to pat him on the back, “good job old chap!” [...]
26Jan2010 | Mike Van Winkle | 3 comments | ContinuedDeficit Spending and Future Generations: Not What You Might Think
Ultimately, the real choice is not between deficit-financed and tax-financed spending. The moral question is whether we should have more spending and bigger government with less liberty or less spending with a smaller government and more liberty. The hand-wringing on the left and right about passing the cost of “stimulating” our economy onto future generations is misplaced. No matter how it’s financed, Obama’s new spending has the potential to stimulate only one thing: the size, scope, and power of government.
21May2009 | Roy Cordato | 32 comments | ContinuedGovernment Spending Is No Cure for Recession
Mario Rizzo debunks the claim that government spending is as good economically as private spending here. Definitely worth reading.
19Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedNews Flash: FDR Didn’t Restore Prosperity!
The New Deal did not end the Great Depression. This statement will come as no shock to Freeman readers, but it will to the many people who have never encountered it before. Now people are encountering it—in newspaper columns and news-talk shows. Why, after years of being taught that Franklin Roosevelt’s economic intervention saved the [...]
2Mar2009 | Sheldon Richman | 5 comments | ContinuedPolitical Sophistry
Here’s a sleazy piece of demagoguery: Republicans were big spenders when they were in control of the government. Republicans, hypocritically, criticize Democrats for being big spenders. Ergo, arguments against big government spending are invalid. A non sequitur, to be sure. But a highly convenient one.
10Feb2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Inflation as Income Distribution
The Federal Reserve has been pumping hundreds of billions of newly created dollars into “the economy.” Much of that money has been sent to Wall Street to bailout large, struggling firms. But that’s just the beginning. President-elect Obama says that since he needs to “stimulate the economy” we can look forward to trillion-dollar budget deficits [...]
9Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedShame on You, Paul Krugman
We are certainly used to the fallacious Keynesian “economics” that pours forth from most of Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns. That’s bad enough. But dishonesty too? What’s the excuse for that? In a recent column called “Fifty Herbert Hoovers,” Krugman expressed fear that the nation’s governors would follow in the footsteps of Hoover, with [...]
5Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 7 comments | ContinuedJohn Maynard Keynes: The Damage Still Done by a Defunct Economist
Seventy years ago, on February 4, 1936, the English economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) published what soon became his most famous work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Few books, in so short a time, have gained such wide influence and generated so destructive an impact on public policy. What Keynes succeeded in [...]
1May2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 40 comments | Continued-
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