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The New York Times and Fiscal Austerity
The New York Times is devoting a lot of space recently to debunking the Republican’s supposed campaign to inflict fiscal austerity on the United States. My May 10, 2013 blog entry responded to an NYT...
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Updated Budget Projections from the Congressional Budget Office
The Congressional Budget Office has just released an update to its February 2013 Budget Projections. The deficit for 2013 is now projected to be $642 billion, down from the previous $845 billion....
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CBO Analysis of the President’s 2014 Budget
The Congressional Budget Office has just released “An Analysis of the President’s 2014 Budget”. News reports highlight that the Obama plan will decrease the deficit over the next ten years by $1.1...
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Income Inequality and What to Do About It
In yesterday’s New York Times Timothy Noah has a column in The Great Divide series “The 1 Percent Are Only Half the Problem” in which he makes the case that there are two different types of...
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A Frightening New Look at the U.S. Debt Problem
Let’s take another look at the Congressional Budget Office’s “An Analysis of the President’s 2014 Budget”. On May 18, I pointed out that his budget projects a deficit of “only” 2% ten years from now...
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What is America’s Biggest Problem?
I’d like to do things differently on Memorial Day and ask you to say what you think our biggest national problem is at the present time. If you have been following this blog for a while, you can...
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Is Voucher Really a Dirty Word?
The current issue (May 25, 2013) of the Economist has an excellent article “Entitlements in America”, which tackles the broad issues of entitlement spending and health care inflation in America....
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Is Medicare Out of the Woods?
The Medicare Trustees have just released their annual report and, according to today’s Wall Street Journal, “Medicare Trustees’ Report Eases Concerns on Funding”. In 2012 Medicare expenses, most of...
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Colonoscopies Show Why American Health Care is So Expensive
Yesterday’s New York Times has an excellent article, “The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill”, which uses a detailed analysis of the cost of colonoscopies to show why American healthcare is so expensive. In...
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Free Market Healthcare in America: How Do We Get There?
Almost everyone agrees that healthcare in the U.S. is way too expensive but how do we change to a better system? Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Avik Roy have laid out a roadmap to do this: “The future of...
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After the Crisis: The Power Inversion and What It Means
In today’s New York Times David Brooks has a column “The Power Inversion” describing a shift of economic and political power from the federal government to municipal governments. Of course, the...
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Should Nebraska Adopt the Common Core Standards?
Yesterday’s New York Times has an article by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus “Who’s Minding the Schools?”, which makes a strong case against the so called Common Core education standards already...
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Fiscal Fixes for the Jobless Recovery
The economist Alan Blinder has a column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Fiscal Fixes for the Jobless Recovery” where he deplores the apparent complacency about our stubbornly high...
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Looking for Help!
America is in a tough position at the present time, both economically and fiscally. Our economy is stuck in a slow growth mode of 2% per year, ever since the end of the recession four years ago....
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Is America in Decline?
A new book by the two economists Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane “Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America” analyzes the decline of many of the great empires and...
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Who is Responsible for the Sour Economy?
In yesterday’s New York Times the columnist Ross Douthat with “The Great Disconnect” makes a good case that the Washington to Boston corridor, i.e. the national elite, is disconnected from America’s...
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Should Welfare Recipients Be Required to Work?
On June 18, 2013, Lawrence Mead, Department of Politics and Public Policy, New York University, testified before Congress, “Making Welfare Work”, that even as the number of Americans receiving...
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Why it’s So Hard to Get the Long-term Unemployed Back to Work
Earlier this month the economist Edward Lazear had an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal “The Hidden Jobless Disaster”, pointing out that, even though the unemployment rate has been dropping for...
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Who is Conducting War on the Unemployed?
In his ever provocative fashion, columnist Paul Krugman claims in today’s New York Times that fiscal conservatives, i.e. Republicans, are conducting “War On the Unemployed” because extended...
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Immigration Reform is Pro-Growth
The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal, “A Pro-Growth Reform”, is right on the money. It challenges the GOP House to improve the Senate immigration bill, not kill it. The emphasis in the...
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