When I was growing up an ice cream cone was a nickel a scoop. Now, a single scoop cone at my local Baskin Robbins is three dollars. That’s sixty nickels. So far as I am aware, there is no shortage of cows or sugar. A British economist, John Maynard Keynes, promoted the idea that government […]
In ancient Greece, the saying went that a democracy dies as soon as the public realizes it can vote itself the keys to the treasury. After three rounds of stimulus—and with a fourth round under consideration—let’s hope for the sake of our democracy that the public doesn’t catch on. Government deficit spending during a recession […]
In the last four years, the federal government has both cut government revenue and dramatically increased spending. It’s an unsettling combination, the precise long-term results of which will be debated by economists like myself until the cows come home. But at least one thing is already certain: The fiscal impact of all the federal COVID-19 […]
While some economic pundits go gaga about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package (which is, by the way, a mere .6 trillion more than the fortunes of the world’s billionaires increased over a year’s worth of pandemic-fired profit taking), let’s remember that all this largesse comes with a large price tag for our children, their children, […]
There are times when Americans are concerned with the national debt. Now is not one of them. US President Joe Biden has unveiled another significant spending proposal and there is the predictable blowback from Republicans on how it will be paid for. Biden announced on Wednesday that his $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan, if passed as proposed, will be […]
McConnell cites tax increases and national debt Surprise, surprise, Republicans are worried about the national debt again. Their strategy going into the mid-terms is going to be to rail against tax hikes and debt. It worked to swing the House in Obama’s first mid-term, we’ll have to wait and see if it works again. Wed […]
On March 15, Joe Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act. Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted in favor of this legislation because only 9% of it had anything to do with the Wuhan China Virus. This, in light of the fact that a trillion dollars were not […]
I was cleaning my office the other day when I came across a rare piece of history. It was a page proof — a printout of an editorial page generally used for editing — dated Nov. 13, 2010, and it featured an editorial I wrote in support of the Simpson-Bowles plan to reduce the nation’s […]
