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 …
In his latest article in Foreign Affairs, Carl J. Schramm, president and CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, calls for “expeditionary economics” a new strategy for reconstructing economies of post-conflict countries. Pointing out that the current U.S. Army Stability Operations field manual “epitomizes the central-planning mindset that prevails in …
The eleven year old euro zone, the world’s second largest economy after the U.S., confronts a cold reality: its members lost economic vitality over the euro’s first decade, as shown in this WSJ chart. The WSJ reports: [The] appetite for structural overhaul is low among Europeans, who have long believed …
Recent reports of China’s economic growth contrasted with the U.S. economic downturn have left Americans increasingly concerned that China is becoming a new superpower, controls American finances and will surpass the United States as the world’s leading power. The reality is that the fundamentals of the American economy are stronger …
CATO’s Dan Mitchell has a new video out produced by The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation on the relationship between governemnt spending and economic growth. Watch: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pdmNynEwYA[/youtube] If all of those cites to ecnomic papers flashed by too quickly, don’t worry. You can find many of them in this …
On this week’s season premiere of the popular AMC show “Mad Men” viewers were reminded about the punitive high tax rates in the 1960s: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx8bQ-hqIUY[/youtube] This episode of Mad Men takes place in 1963, when the top income tax rate was 91 percent on incomes over $200,000 ($400,000 for married …
Supposedly, trends start in California and then spread to the rest of the country, a notion that seems to be confirmed by the latest economic news. In May, California’s unemployment rate hit 11.5 percent—the highest it has been since 1941. This morning, we learn that unemployment for the entire country …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a paper: Did the 2008 Tax Rebates Stimulate Short-term Growth? The paper is a comprehensive summary of the best recent literature on the topic. CBO sorts the literature into three categories: Studies that used detailed data about individual spending to study the effects …
