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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It’s coming! Finally! And according to White House press secretary Jay Carney, it will be mind-blowing! The Arizona Daily Star summarizes the basics of we know so far of the budget proposal that President Obama will release more than two months behind the schedule set by law on Wednesday, April 10th: The plan, if…
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Columnist Paul Krugman denies that “liberal big spending and overpaid public employees were bringing on collapse” in California, and he parrots governor Jerry Brown’s claim that the Golden State is on the comeback trail. Before joining the celebration, taxpayers might examine a new report from the Bureau of State Audits that pegs California’s net…
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The federal government gave $17.9 million to economically struggling rural timber counties in the west for conservation projects, schools, roads, rescue operations and such. Now the federal government wants the money back. A letter of protest signed by more than 30 House members, including Democrats, said: “For the administration to announce three months after…
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AEI’s Mark Perry is featuring a colorful presentation of the U.S. government’s current fiscal year budget. It’s just coincidental that the app produces the following Easter-inspired color scheme when you select for “Total” spending and “Agency” for the bubble color: Looking at the data, we’ll bet you didn’t know that the Department of Defense…
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The budget recently passed by Senate Democrats approves spending of $3.7 trillion over the next year alone, and this is not a new trend. Economist Burton Abrams notes that since 2000, the U.S. federal government has overspent in excess of $10 trillion. Deficits of $16 trillion confirm that government has a hard time saving….
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The November election made California the highest-tax state in the nation by raising the top rate of state income tax to 13.3 percent, an increase of 29.13 percent. Sales tax now ranges from 7.5 percent to 10 percent in parts of Los Angeles County. But the same legislators who pledged fiscal restraint now want…
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Previously, we considered the negative impact that having too much national debt might have on the performance of the U.S. economy, keeping it from being able to grow as fast as it might otherwise if it were not for having such a large national debt. But that may be a small cost to bear…
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The federal government won’t say who they are, but in 2013 two people still get government payments for the U.S. Civil War, which ended nearly 150 years ago. No government official made that information public. It only emerged as the result of an investigation of federal payment records by the Associated Press, which also…
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Not long ago, we summarized the findings of new academic research into the fiscal stability of nations to determine the level of government-issued debt they can afford to rack up before it begins to harm their economies. One of the paper’s co-authors, Jim Hamilton of the University of California in San Diego, applied the…
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