Are there any fact checkers at the New York Times? Since they’ve allowed some glaring mistakes by Paul Krugman (see here and here), I guess the answer is no. But some mistakes are worse than others. Consider a recent column by David Stuckler of Oxford and Sanjay Basu of Stanford. Entitled “How Austerity Kills,” it […]
read more...The main goal of fiscal policy should be to shrink the burden of government spending as a share of economic output. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve this modest goal. All that’s required is to make sure the private sector grows faster than the government. But it’s very easy for me to bluster […]
read more...Whenever someone proposes that we need more intervention from the federal government, I always go to the Constitution and check Article I, Section VIII. This is because I’m old fashioned and I actually think the Founding Fathers weren’t joking when they granted only a few enumerated powers to the federal government. And when I check […]
read more...The most important, powerful, and relevant argument against the value-added tax in the short run is that we can balance the budget in just five years by capping spending so it grows at the rate of inflation, a very modest level of fiscal restraint. The most important, powerful, and relevant argument against the value-added tax […]
read more...I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the simple reason that the “job opening and labor turnover” data from the Department […]
read more...Paul Krugman recently tried to declare victory for Keynesian economics over so-called austerity, but all he really accomplished was to show that tax-financed government spending is bad for prosperity. More specifically, he presented a decent case against the European-IMF version of “austerity,” which has produced big tax increases. But what happens if nations adopt the […]
read more...You don’t enjoy many victories when you fight for liberty, so I’m not averse to spiking the football on those rare occasions when we win. That’s why I shared this very funny cartoon last week to celebrate Obama’s belly flop on gun control. Now we have another cartoon, this one by Henry Payne, mocking the […]
read more...For those who haven’t followed this issue, Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart wrote an influential paper in 2010 arguing that government debt above 90 percent of GDP was associated with weaker economic performance. It turns out that the Rogoff and Reinhart made a mistake in their excel spreadsheet and this error was publicized in a […]
read more...I’m a big fan of Chuck Asay’s political cartoons. My favorite is his nothing-left-to-steal masterpiece. And his tractor cartoon and his regime-uncertainty cartoon are brilliant indictments of Obamanomics. Here’s another classic. It shows the impact of the welfare state on incentives for work, self reliance, and independence. In six cartoon frames, he cleverly explains the economics […]
read more...The fiscal policy debate often drives me crazy because far too many people focus on deficits. The Keynesians argue that deficits are good for growth and this leads them to support more government spending. The “austerity” crowd at places such as the International Monetary Fund, by contrast, argues that deficits are bad for growth and […]
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