Be sure to listen to last week’s Heritage Libertad radio show, both in English and Spanish. The show included segments on President Obama’s upcoming jobs speech, the role of religion in politics and, as always, a segment answering Heritage member questions. Questions included: Is the United States a democracy or …
The concept of a Keynesian stimulus never seems to tire among politicians eager to grow the economy artificially by spending other people’s money. Recently, Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack encouraged expanding SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program aimed to help the poor, as a way to stimulate the economy. …
Proponents of government spending are fond of citing 1937 as an example of when government implemented sharp austerity, and the economy derailed. This argument is dead wrong. On Thursday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued that fiscal austerity right now would make our economic crisis worse. “Even if we manage to avoid immediate catastrophe, the …
The Keynesian policy of trying to increase total i.e. “aggregate” demand – either by having government spend, or by cutting taxes just to leave more money in people’s pockets in hopes that they’ll spend – to revive the economy, never works. The latest installment of Keynesian failure is the payroll …
MADISON, Wis. — Teachers’ unions and representatives of every liberal interest group in the country may have taken over the streets of Madison for demonstrations, marches and speeches, but inside the Wisconsin governor’s mansion its chief tenant remains calm and resolute. The Badger State’s budget will be balanced, Gov. Scott …
A considerable volume of cross-country analysis has found no positive impact on economic growth from more government spending. Many studies (see here and here, for example) find that government spending actually hurts growth. A recent study by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal of economic recovery following the …
In his State of the Union address, President Obama used innovation as one of the key words in elaborating his vision for America’s economic future. He embraced the word quite often during his speech, mentioning “innovation” eight times. If other variations of the word, such as innovate and innovative, are …
The Wall Street Journal reports: “President Barack Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday … Mr. Obama will argue that the U.S., even while trying to reduce its budget deficit, must make targeted investments to foster job …
Last week, George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, unveiled the results of a wide-ranging review of spending, designed to bring the government’s share of the economy down from today’s 47.5 percent to 41 percent by 2014–15. In the main, the review’s results are welcome, though they do not …
