All Posts Tagged With: "government spending"
Private Investment and Public “Investment”
Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]
22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedMedical Consumers or Wards of the State?
Paul Krugman wants to know: “How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as ‘consumers’?” Let’s concede for argument’s sake there is something unattractive about viewing patients as consumers. Krugman writes, “Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions—life and death decisions—must be made. [...]
22Jun2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedBudget-Cutting Resistance
So here’s the problem: While polls show that people want the government’s budget deficit and the national debt reduced, they don’t want the biggest spending items cut. In the April 17 ABC News-Washington Post poll, 59 percent said that the deficit should be reduced through a combination of unspecified spending cuts and tax increases. But [...]
22Jun2011 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedAffording It All
People who don’t understand — or don’t care about — economics say funny things.
10Jun2011 | Sheldon Richman | 24 comments | ContinuedHad Enough Yet?
Let’s acknowledge the debt of gratitude due every politician who put us in this predicament. Each spending vote dug the hole deeper and made it harder to get out.
8Apr2011 | Sheldon Richman | 20 comments | ContinuedThe Economic Costs of the Civil War
Even after 150 years, the Civil War evokes memories of great men and great battles. Certainly that war was a milestone in U.S. history, and on the plus side it reunited the nation and freed the slaves. Few historians, however, describe the costs of the war. Not just the 620,000 individuals who died, or the [...]
23Mar2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 7 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s Turning Point
The Civil War represents the simultaneous culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution. Four successive ideological surges had previously defined American politics: the radical republican movement that had spearheaded the revolution itself; the subsequent Jeffersonian movement that had arisen in reaction to the Federalist State; the Jacksonian movement that followed the War of 1812; and [...]
23Mar2011 | Jeffrey Rogers Hummel | 22 comments | ContinuedIdeological and Political Underpinnings of the Great Society
The surge of federal economic interventions that occurred during Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency—the much-ballyhooed Great Society, whose centerpiece was the War on Poverty—differed from the four preceding surges, each of which had been sparked by war or economic depression. No national emergency prevailed when Johnson took office following John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, [...]
24Feb2011 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedThere’s Got to Be a Better Way
What’s so remarkable about events in the Middle East is that a significant number of people who had felt powerless looked around at what they’d seen every day of their lives and thought for the first time: “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
18Feb2011 | Sheldon Richman | 18 comments | ContinuedNew Year’s Resolutions for Politicians
Recognizing that self-restraint is rarely a strength of politicians, we want to offer some help. Here are three New Year’s resolutions for politicians.
13Jan2011 | Steven Horwitz | 8 comments | ContinuedPresidential Hubris
If we were going to spend $700 billion, it seems it would be wiser having that $700 billion going to folks who would spend that money right away. In October Barack Obama said this in defense of his opposition to extending the 2001 and 2003 tax-rate reductions for people making more than $200,000 a year. [...]
22Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedYour Government at Work
More testimony on behalf of the government’s respect for the taxpayers. From Reuters: Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday. Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. [...]
21Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Tax-Rate Debate in Perspective
Over many decades the total federal take from taxation has been quite steady: just under 20 percent of GDP. (It dips during recessions, of course.) This tells us that people — surprise! — adjust their behavior to the tax rates and as a result the haul stays about the same. So the fight over rates [...]
20Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedBudget Mice
If the opposition wing of the uniparty managed to cut all discretionary spending – which of course it does not promise to do — the deficit would still be a whopping $747 billion.
5Nov2010 | Sheldon Richman | 16 comments | ContinuedTaking On Unions
In my last column I noted that unions seem to be losing respect among the public. It now appears that that loss of respect is translating into an increased willingness by voters, and even some politicians, to challenge unions, especially those that represent government employees. Rahm Emanuel famously opined that “You never let a serious [...]
22Oct2010 | Charles W. Baird | 3 comments | ContinuedMemo to Alan Greenspan: Keep Quiet
I’m getting tired of Alan Greenspan. First, the former Federal Reserve chairman blamed an allegedly unregulated free market for the housing and financial debacle. Now he favors repealing the Bush-era tax cuts. This has a certain sad irony. Recall that Greenspan once was an associate of Ayn Rand, the philosophical novelist who provided a moral [...]
22Oct2010 | John Stossel | 10 comments | ContinuedDeficit Hawks or War Hawks?
Last month I asked if the American people can afford a world-girdling foreign policy more befitting an empire than a republic. Look at it this way: War hawks make poor deficit hawks. Facing a $13 trillion national debt and trillion-dollar-plus annual budget deficits, we can’t afford to be complacent about foreign interventions costing $12 billion [...]
22Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued-
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