Author Archive: Burt Abrams

In 2009, Keynesian economists in the Obama administration were downright giddy with excitement. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed by congress was the “biggest peacetime fiscal stimulus in U.S. history” that promised to return the economy to full employment in short order. The Act’s $787 billion (equivalent to about 5% of our national output) in...
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There are two disparate views of our large and growing public debt. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, in a recent International Herald Tribune editorial “Cheating America’s Children” (March 30-31, 2013), considers those who have been worrying about our burgeoning public debt as ”Chicken Littles.” Chicken Little, you may recall, is hit in the head by an acorn and subsequently runs about...
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Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve Bank seem to be determined to reinflate the real estate bubble. Ben was blind-sided by the bursting of the bubble in 2006 as evidenced by his earlier CNBC interview: “Well, I guess I don’t buy your premise [that there is a real estate bubble]. It’s a pretty unlikely...
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I’ve been asking a number of friends (mostly Democrats) if they could guess the amount of gross public debt that exists for each U.S. taxpayer. No one has come close. Now with final exams in progress in universities, I reckoned a pop quiz was in order for the readership. So here it is (no peeking at the...
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The infant-industry argument claims that tariff protection is needed so that fledgling industries can grow up and fend for themselves. History taught us that these industries rarely, if ever, grow up. Today, due to the rules of the World Trade Organization, tariff protection is no longer a viable policy tool. So what’s an infant industry to do? Seek subsidies, of course. The year 2012 marked...
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Americans have become dependent on publicly provided “free lunches,” government programs without the taxes. The public whines about any attempt to raise taxes (other than those on the “rich”) while clamoring for all the entitlement programs the government can dish out. As a result of this whine and dining, nearly half of all households...
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Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime. Now that the major party conventions are over, I’m dismayed over the complete neglect of one of the most important industries and pressure groups in America: recreational fishing and fisherpersons. As this is an activity...
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How much will the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) cost us? Craig Eyermann’s July 25th blog post lays out the various tax increases that are expected under the Act. Another way of looking at the Act and the taxes that will be needed is provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s subsidy calculator. The calculator provides estimates for the...
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The disease known as Eurosclerosis that has infected Europe for decades now has taken a turn for the worse. It appears that amputations are about the only viable treatment as countries with particularly advanced stages of the disease are likely to be cut from the euro-zone. This has prompted an old-fashioned run on the...
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Will Rogers claimed to have never met a man that he didn’t like. I’m consistent too. I never read anything by Robert Reich that I liked. Dr. Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and currently a named professor at UC Berkeley, is at it again. In writing for the U.K.’s The Guardian,...
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