All Posts Tagged With: "federal spending"

More Government Action Needed for Job Recovery?

Would it come as a shock to hear one of the best-known apologists for government intervention in the economy admitting that it hasn’t worked (so far)? This is exactly what Nobel Prize-winning economist and uber-Keynesian Paul Krugman does in a New York Times column, stating, “[W]e are not now and have never been on the [...]

26Oct2011 | Tyler Watts | 1 comment | Continued

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 | Continued

The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism

“Can we do it again?” asks Amity Shlaes in her introduction to this book. She is asking about the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. In his final chapter George Melloan answers yes. But it won’t be easy because of the great expansion of government in 2008-09. He calls for a new vision of “Supply-Side Prosperity.” [...]

24Nov2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Can 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 | Continued

How 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 | Continued

Comparing the Great Depression to the Great Recession

President Obama has often remarked that the Great Recession (2008–10) is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It’s interesting to study the many parallels between the Great Recession and the Great Depression. Causation. The main causes of both crises lie in actions of the federal government. In the case of the Great Depression, [...]

20May2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 47 comments | Continued

End the Fed

Of all the blunders in American history, perhaps the greatest was the decision to put control of money and banking in the hands of a cabal of big bankers operating under the highfalutin title “Federal Reserve System.” Unfortunately, few among us know anything about the Fed, much less have any inkling of how badly it [...]

24Mar2010 | George C. Leef | 3 comments | Continued

Government Must Stimulate to Avoid a 1937-Style Recession?

It is rather unfortunate that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Economics Prize Committee chose to award the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics to Paul Krugman. It is not that Krugman did not deserve the prize—his contributions to international trade theory were indeed substantive and valuable. The problem is that by 2008 Krugman had long [...]

24Mar2010 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 6 comments | Continued

President Obama Urges Banks to Lend

“President Obama exhorted the nation’s biggest banks on Monday to make ‘extraordinary’ efforts to increase lending, even as some of those firms are racing to distance themselves from government control.” (Washington Post, Tuesday) This makes perfect sense. If banks don’t engage in risky lending again, how ever will the government be able continue “rescuing” them. [...]

15Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | Continued

Citigroup to Repay $20 Billion

“Citigroup said Monday that it had reached an agreement to wean itself from the government bailout by the end of 2010, beginning with the repayment of $20 billion in federal aid. “The deal is the latest sign that both banks and the government are eager to end an extraordinary period of federal support for the [...]

14Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | Continued

Congress Passes $1 Trillion Stimulus Spending Bill

“The Senate on Sunday sent President Obama another hot potato, passing a $1.1 trillion catchall spending bill that includes money needed to run dozens of government agencies but also is loaded with pork-barrel spending. “The bill, which funds most domestic federal agencies for the rest of this fiscal year, marks a 12 percent spending increase. [...]

14Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | Continued

New “Jobs” Initiative on the Way

“President Barack Obama is promoting help for highways and small businesses, bridges and energy-efficient homes in a broad pitch to get Americans back to work and roll back the double-digit unemployment that’s approaching a quarter-century high, an administration official said Tuesday.” (Washington Times, Tuesday) Stimulus II: Don’t Call it a Comeback FEE Timely Classic: “Public [...]

8Dec2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 1 comment | Continued

The Depression You’ve Never Heard Of: 1920-1921

When it comes to diagnosing the causes of the Great Depression and prescribing cures for our present recession, the pundits and economists from the biggest schools typically argue about two different types of intervention. Big-government Keynesians, such as Paul Krugman, argue for massive fiscal stimulus—that is, huge budget deficits—to fill the gap in aggregate demand. [...]

18Nov2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 73 comments | Continued

The Politics of Freedom

Thomas Paine said that freedom had been hunted and harassed around the world and that only America offered it a home. Today, it seems to many Americans that freedom is on the run here, too. War and taxes, the nanny state and the Patriot Act, unsustainable entitlements—all threaten the liberty we enjoy as Americans. But [...]

1May2008 | David Boaz | 8 comments | Continued

Why 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 | Continued

Where in the World Can You Find Economic Freedom?

Late 2003 saw the release of the most recent editions of two publications that rank the nations of the world according to their degrees of economic freedom. The Fraser Institute, located in British Columbia, put out the eighth edition of its Economic Freedom of the World and the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal published [...]

1Sep2004 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

The Tax Code: Now That’s Outrageous!

If you’ve ever had the sinking suspicion that many in the mainstream media just don’t get it, then the September 2002 issue of Reader’s Digest was just for you. In its pages, conservative columnist Tucker Carlson penned his mighty attack on American business under the title “Artful Dodgers,” in the “That’s Outrageous!” department of the [...]

1Dec2002 | Scott McPherson | 0 comments | Continued
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