On October 25, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published an analysis of changes in the distribution of household income between 1979 and 2007. CBO argues that the 62 percent gain in average household income over this 28-year period mostly went to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution, where average income grew by 65 percent. Average household income in the top 1 percent of the distribution grew by 275 percent after taxes. Those households in the bottom 20 percent of all households saw income gains of 18 …
Over the past two weeks, you have relentlessly engaged in dishonest, deceptive and factually incorrect critiques of Heritage’s recent analysis of the Ryan budget plan, and they need to be addressed. With all of the work good people of every political stripe need to be doing in Washington today, the last thing we all have time for is correcting your typically contrived commentary. But when The New York Times gives you such a platform to spread distortions, they necessitate a response. You’ve laid out several claims about Heritage’s macroeconomic analysis …
We were a little taken aback the other day when Joe Davidson’s “Federal Diary” column in The Washington Post quoted a top White House appointee and two union leaders attacking our research findings that federal workers get paid more than private sector counterparts as “lies,” “misinformation” and — oh my — “scapegoating.” We got in touch with Mr. Davidson to voice our disappointment that he would print such scurrilous charges about Heritage analysts — who put the cost to taxpayers at over $40 billion a year — without extending us …
There simply is no way to avoid thinking and, perhaps, even starting the analysis of economic policy except from a set of principles. Whether it be labor, investment, trade, or a host of other pieces of our national economic policy; analysts only will be able to understand policy change if they have a foundation of guiding principles. No one would see a physician who was untrained in the mechanics and chemistry of the human body. It would be somewhat disconcerting if physicians were surprised by the presence of body temperature …
Political candidates apparently can choose no better campaign issue this year than excessive government spending and the exploding debt it’s producing. In one campaign after another, voters high and low on the economic ladder respond in the same way when challengers berate incumbents for reckless debt accumulation: raucous, fist-pumping applause and that same grimace that must have graced the faces of our revolutionary forebears. This prime issue of the 2010 election season no doubt will be the subject of analysis by students of politics for years to come. Even now, …
On May 25, the Fiscal Analysis Initiative of Pew’s Economic Policy Group published an overview of what might happen to the federal government’s annual deficits should the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 be allowed to expire, be extended through 2012, or be made permanent. As readers may know, all of the tax relief currently in force will disappear by law at the end of this year. Unfortunately, Pew’s report does little to inform policy makers on the awesome economic decisions they are about to make. Had it focused as …
Today marks the seventh year that we have published the Index of Dependence on Government. And, for seven years running, our Index shows growing dependence. The Index now stands at 240, up from a value of 19 in 1962, or a nearly 13 fold increase since the Kennedy administration. The rate of growth, however, actually has increased over the last eight years. That period saw the second highest rate of growth in dependency creating programs: since 2001, the Index has increased 31 percent. Most disturbing of all, all of the …
This year’s Index of Economic Freedom contains the unsettling news that the United States has dropped out of the exclusive club of free economies and is graded “mostly free” for the first time in the Index’s 16-year history. The United States’ Index score dropped from last year’s 80.7 to this year’s 78. For many Americans who still have their jobs and incomes, “mostly free” may feel no different than “free.” For the nearly 20 million who lack work or the millions more who find themselves working for a lot less …
Congress soon will seal the fate of federal death taxes. If Congress acts by doing nothing, then the federal tax rate on estates will fall to zero for all of 2010 before rising to 55 percent on January 1, 2011. That’s current law. On the other hand, it could pass legislation to set the tax rate above zero for 2010. That zero rate has a number of people worried, including executives of some of the nation’s largest non-profit organizations, who think that a one-year repeal of death taxes will undermine …
The White House announced this morning that it would be delaying release of updated financial and economic forecasts until the middle of August. In other words, its usual mid-July update of key forecasts for policy makers will not be published in time for expected House and Senate votes on health care reform. This delay matters enormously to the deliberations of Congress on this central issue. If it knew that the near-term budget picture is worsening and that it cannot count on a recovering economy to produce much needed revenues for …
