All Posts Tagged With: "public works"
Which Strategy Really Ended the Great Depression?
“World War II got us out of the Great Depression.” Many people said that during the war, and some still do today. The quality of American life, however, was precarious during the war. Food was rationed, luxuries removed, taxes high, and work dangerous. A recovery that does not make—as Robert Higgs points out in Depression, [...]
24Aug2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedPublic Works and Pyramids
High-cost government projects can be impressive and even have a wonder all their own, like Hoover Dam. However, if they use more wealth than they create, they are a burden, period.
13Oct2010 | William L. Anderson | 9 comments | ContinuedNew “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 | ContinuedOld, Bold Futility
In economic analysis and policy formulation, profundity is not to be confused with complexity. And simple logic is not the same as simplicity. Reliance in thought and communication on shortcut slogans and mottos yields not solution but fiasco. With employment slumping, many would have us believe in a simplistic “bold economic recovery program.” With vast [...]
23Oct2009 | and William R. Allen | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat Is Seen and What Is Unseen: Government “Job Creation”
How can Obama and his economic advisers know what kinds of jobs will position our economy to “lead the world” in the long term? Indeed, how can we expect anyone to know what kinds of jobs will be able to offer such a guarantee of wealth and security, considering the enormous complexity of our world?
10Jun2009 | Larissa Price | 32 comments | ContinuedReal Jobs Create Wealth
If the government’s projects were truly worthwhile, they would be undertaken by private efforts, and in their quest for profits, entrepreneurs would handle them more efficiently.
Remember this when President Obama begins to boast about how successful his stimulus plan is.
21May2009 | John Stossel | 11 comments | ContinuedGovernment Fundamentalism
Many free-market economists like me are quite willing to admit that markets don’t work perfectly and to examine and accept government solutions if their advocates can show how governments can be motivated to actually carry them out. And yet we are called market fundamentalists. On the other hand, many people who call us that are unwilling to change any of their views about the efficacy of government intervention no matter how badly the intervention works. Who are the fundamentalists here?
21May2009 | David R. Henderson | 16 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Boon or Doggle?
Even if government spending in theory could “stimulate the economy” in a genuine, sustainable way, it would not follow that politicians and bureaucrats would know how to spend the money intelligently. The pressures to do something now and the perverse incentives facing those in charge of the money guarantee there would be more doggle than [...]
23Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Myth of Public Works as an Economic Stimulus
Words to ponder as the stimulus bill snakes through Congress: While we have legitimate infrastructure needs, public-works spending historically has been too slow, has delayed private and local government spending, and created few jobs for the unemployed. The programs are not labor-intensive and require skills few unemployed have. Public works did not end the Great [...]
23Jan2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedDeath by Public Works
Almost all historians who write on the New Deal praise Franklin Roosevelt for using government to “solve” economic problems. Often, however, these historians only tell part of the story. One example is Roosevelt’s vast public-works program. Here most historians wax eloquent on the dams built by TVA, the roads built by WPA, and the bridges [...]
1Mar2007 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedAnother National Disaster in the Making: Government Reconstruction of New Orleans
Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans at the end of August. What followed was a further disaster in the form of government incompetence and confusion at the local, state, and
federal levels. Rarely have we seen a better instance of what Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises once rightly called “planned chaos.”
Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
Dogs and Demons, by expatriate writer Alex Kerr, is another attempt to explain the malaise into which Japan has fallen over the past decade. Japan’s real-estate and stock-market bubbles have burst with prices falling to one-quarter their previous highs; the Japanese government’s budget deficits dwarf even those run by the United States during the ’80s [...]
17Mar2003 | Victor A. Matheson | 0 comments | ContinuedInternal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States by John Lauritz Larson
University of North Carolina Press • 2001 • 324 pages • $55.00 cloth; $19.95 paperback Reviewed by Burton Folsom, Jr. In 1805 Thomas Jefferson, in his second inaugural address, focused attention on the limited government of his presidency: “[I]t may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what mechanic, [...]
1Jun2002 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedFreeing the Freeways
Leigh Jenco is pursuing a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago. Sitting in rush-hour traffic every working day of your life is enough to make you forget how much highways used to represent liberation. That’s why a popular exhibition that ran recently at the National Building Museum, titled “See the U.S.A.: Automobile [...]
1Nov2000 | Leigh Jenco | 2 comments | ContinuedWrecking: The Ominous Rationale for Attacks on the Tobacco Industry
Daniel Hager is a senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates in East Lansing, Michigan. The state of Minnesota’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry has ended in a multibillion-dollar settlement. Litigation by other states is expected to yield them lucrative windfalls as well, and Congress has had its own eye on forcing the industry to [...]
1Nov1998 | Daniel Hager | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
