Since we’re already depressed by the enactment of Obamacare, we may as well wallow in misery by looking at some long-term budget numbers. The chart below, which is based on the Congressional Budget Office’s long-run estimates, shows that federal government…
Daily Analysis
Great Moments in International Bureaucracy.
Greece’s fiscal disarray is a visible manifestation of Europe’s future, but the most appropriate symbol of what’s wrong with the continent comes from Brussels, where there are three “presidents” fighting over the right to represent Europe…
The Right Way to Deal with Budget Problems.
The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial today lauding the new Republicans governors of New Jersey and Virginia, both of whom are reducing spending. But unlike in Washington, where a spending cut is so loosely defined that politicians can increase spending and…
Only Mark Steyn Could (Appropriately) Combine Pornography and Healthcare.
Very funny column, but the underlying message is quite depressing: Last Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to set up a committee to examine whether condoms should be required on all pornographic film shoots. California has…
A Victory Against the Federal Reserve
Kudos to the federal appeals court that just ruled that the Federal Reserve has no right to hide the sordid special handouts it provided to well-connected financial firms. Here’s an excerpt from a report about the decision: The Federal Reserve Board must…
The Joy of Government-Run Healthcare
I don’t think the number of doctors leaving the profession will come anywhere close to this level, but polling data reported by the New England Journal of Medicine is another indication of the dangers of letting politicians get even more power over the health…
Personal Accounts Are Better than Empty Promises from Social Security
My Cato colleague Jose Pinera makes a powerful argument for “privatizing” Social Security, which is something that has happened in about 30 nations. My Ph.D. dissertation was on Australia’s private system, so I’ve always had a soft spot for…
Does a Story about Government-Run Healthcare Have a Happy Ending?
We’ve already addressed this issue, but this story is even more amusng. I’ll resist the need for any (additional) awful puns, and I’ll even admit I don’t know for sure that these…um…services are financed by taxpayers (but that must…
A Confession from the CBO Director
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the so-called stimulus generated jobs and growth. I addressed some of the profound shortcomings in CBO’s Keynesian model in a previous post, pointing out that the model is structured to produce certain…
Keynesian Economics and the Wizard of Oz.
When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to the state of Keynesian economics. It…