All Posts Tagged With: "federal budget deficit"
The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History
Today’s most crucial policy battles are about federal spending and the scope of government power. Cato Institute scholar John Samples reminds us in this book that those battles have their origins in the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Early in the twentieth century Herbert Croly (cofounder of The New Republic) argued [...]
24Aug2011 | Greg Kaza | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Right Amount of Manufacturing
Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, recently pointed out that in 2009 the U.S. economy had the world’s largest manufacturing sector. (The most recent data show that China’s sector edged out the United States because of our slow economic recovery.) Every year since 2004 U.S. manufacturing output, in constant 2005 dollars, [...]
22Jun2011 | David R. Henderson | 7 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 | ContinuedThe Evil of Government Debt
As we’ve seen in the last two issues, Destutt de Tracy, writing in early nineteenth-century France, had solid insights about the market process and government spending as a form of consumption not investment. In light of that, no one will be surprised that Tracy opposed government borrowing. In this day of trillion-dollar-plus federal deficits, his [...]
25Aug2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedForeign Lenders: Friends Indeed to a U.S. Treasury in Need
When the U.S. government wishes to spend more money than it receives as tax revenue, it covers the shortfall by borrowing, and foreign lenders have become increasingly important sources of such borrowed funds. Reliance on foreign lenders is as old as the republic. Indeed, loans from the French and the Dutch proved critical in keeping [...]
29Jun2010 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | ContinuedDebt Issues Unavoidable
“‘Right now, this year, we have 1.6 trillion in debt coming due. That’s roughly twice individual income tax revenue. Our only plausible strategy for paying that back is to borrow more money,’ says Leonard Burman, an economist at Syracuse University. Under some grim scenarios, the cumulative debt of the United States could rise to several [...]
8Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Cost of the Federal Government in a Freer America
Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. In February, President George W. Bush submitted his proposed federal budget for the fiscal year that begins in October. It called for total government spending of over $2.9 trillion. The administration and the Republicans in Congress insisted that this budget reflected fiscal responsibility and the promise of a [...]
1Mar2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 2 comments | ContinuedWhy Cut Taxes?
Judging by the popping corks at the White House, taxes are cut to increase government revenues so the budget deficit can be shrunk without reducing government spending. Tax cuts are good, but this reason leaves me cold. President Bush announced recently that “This economy is growing, federal taxes are rising, and we’re cutting the federal [...]
1Oct2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedDeficits Do Matter
Hans Sennholz served as president of the Foundation for Economic Education from 1992 to 1997. At the time of his retirement, FEE’s Board of Trustees honored him with the title president emeritus. He was chairman of the department of economics at Grove City College for many years. This article is reprinted from the December 1986 [...]
1Mar2004 | Hans F. Sennholz | 8 comments | ContinuedBlessed Debt
Should we cut taxes or pay off the national debt? What’s missing from this picture? Aside from the fact that paying off the debt need not be a priority (there is no connection between the debt and economic growth), the question is a classic case of the Fallacy of the False Alternative. If we accept [...]
1Apr2001 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedDon’t Fear Deficits
At current tax rates, barring a recession, the federal government will run large and growing surpluses during the next decade and beyond. Yet regardless of the identity of the new president or the character of the new Congress, we are certain to hear a great deal of talk in the coming months about deficits rather [...]
1Dec2000 | Russell Roberts | 2 comments | ContinuedCut Taxes, Not the Debt
Last fall’s standoff over the budget between the Republican Congress and Democratic President generated a curious by-product: more money to reduce the national debt. Some analysts want to devote future surpluses to the same purpose, perhaps eventually paying off the entire $5.6 trillion national debt.
1Apr2000 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedFlunking Economics
Why should we care about economic literacy? Are we troubled by illiteracy in physics? Or metaphysics? Should we worry that most of us can’t remember much of the periodic chart of the elements? Why should we worry more about economics? Because economic illiteracy is dangerous. I can ride on a roller coaster without understanding centrifugal [...]
1Apr1999 | Lawrence W. Reed | 2 comments | ContinuedAx Business Welfare and Privatize Social Security
Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnists, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. The president and Congress have promised a balanced budget by 2002, but a recent poll found that just 17 percent of Americans [...]
1Mar1998 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedCan the Budget Be Cut?
Mr. Bandow, this month’s guest editor, is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of several books, including The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction). To listen to Washington officials, you’d think cutting the budget was impossible. In their view, every program, no matter how inconsequential, has played a critical role [...]
1Apr1997 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The Truth About the National Debt: Five Myths and One Reality by Francis X. Cavanaugh
Harvard Business School Press • 1996 • 192 pages • $22.95 The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. In this book, Francis X. Cavanaugh, an astute former Treasury Department economist, applies these words of T. S. Eliot to most of the popular discussion of federal budget [...]
1Apr1997 | Robert Batemarco | 0 comments | ContinuedConfession of a Compliant Taxpayer
I’m afraid of the IRS, so I always pay at least as much, and probably more, than I owe in federal taxes. I confess this with apologies to my fellow taxpayers, particularly those who don’t do as I do. You have all heard, and most of you believe, that honest taxpayers are victimized by tax [...]
1Mar1997 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | Continued-
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