Category: Government Spending
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, August 05, 2015
In Greece, Reliance on Public Funds Is the Central Problem / Economics / Government Spending
By: MISES
Justin Murray writes: Greece is a hot topic at the moment, mostly with the continued negotiations over bailouts from the European Union and, through institutions like the IMF, the world at large. Much of the discussion paints the image that Greece is only a debt-restructuring away from a stable economic situation. However, without understanding how Greece got into this problem in the first place and identifying the root cause of an over-indebted society, any plan or solution has a high probability of failure. To crack into this root cause, I had to develop an entirely new metric called “implied public reliance.”
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Blocks of U.S. Government Incompetence / Politics / Government Spending
By: James_Quinn
There were two accidents on the Schuylkill Expressway last Monday morning. You know what this meant. I had the pleasure of traveling to work on the scenic 30 Blocks of Squalor. The 30 blocks from 69th Street in Upper Darby to 39th Street in West Philly is a tribute to government incompetence, failed government policies, shoddy union labor practices and fiscal mismanagement.
This entire thirty block trek could be completed in 5 to 10 minutes if the hundreds of union government drones in the Philadelphia Streets Department would get off their fat asses and timed the lights. The blocks are identical in distance. They don't need advanced degrees in physics or calculus to set the lights to go green every ten seconds in order. They were timed in the 1970s and 1980s. Would smoothly flowing traffic be such a bad thing? Do they not care or are they really this incompetent? The first light at 61st Street was red when I arrived. It turned green and before you could touch the gas, it immediately turned yellow and red again. I wondered how long they'd allow this to go on. My guess would be days.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Greece's Crisis and Its Bloated Government / Economics / Government Spending
By: Steve_H_Hanke
It's hard to find anything written or spoken about Greece that doesn't contain a great deal of hand wringing about the alleged austerity - brutal fiscal austerity -- that the Greek government has been forced to endure at the hands of the so-called troika. This is Alice in Wonderland economics. It supports my 95 percent rule: 95 percent of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant.
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Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Government Spending Does Not Help the Economy / Economics / Government Spending
By: Frank_Shostak
Some economists such as Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman hold that during an economic slump it is the duty of the government to run large budget deficits in order to keep the economy going. On this score — given that from 2011 to 2014 the rate of growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) hovered at around 2 percent — many experts are of the view that the budget deficit, which stood at $483 billion in 2014, wasn’t large enough.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The Cost of Government Is Higher Than You Think / Economics / Government Spending
By: MISES
Gary M. Galles writes: “Look what I did for you!” When our children were small, my wife and I got many gifts from them accompanied with those words (including most of our refrigerator art and many things that still adorn our Christmas trees), in search of approval and encouragement.
While that process was an endearing part of parenting, I have been struck by a far less endearing parallel to public servants. In a similar way, they are always rolling out some new plan or program “for you,” in search of accolades and votes. However, unlike our children, what they claim to have created is frequently misleading to the point of rank dishonesty, because they present the benefits of their panaceas as far greater than they really are and the costs as far less than they really are. And a substantial part of that political overselling involves overlooked crowding-out effects.
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Preparing for Obama’s 2015 Budget / Politics / Government Spending
By: F_F_Wiley
The goal that was identified by Simpson-Bowles was to reduce the deficit as a percentage of GDP to below 3%, but what our budget projection shows is that over the course of the next ten years (or in ten years) the percentage will actually be below 2%. So we’ve made substantial progress in reducing the deficit. - White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest, offering a preview of Obama’s 2015 budget proposal to be unveiled tomorrow
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Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Democracy and Government Spending: Extend and Pretend / Politics / Government Spending
By: MISES
Gregory Bresiger writes: Over the past 80 years or so governments have been expected to provide more and more social services. That means bigger and bigger bills for the taxpayers of this generation and generations unborn. Since governments almost constantly run in the red, they often resemble cocaine addicts desperately looking for the next fix. The fix, in the case of governments, is the perpetual need for more money, no matter how much wealth the engine of a strong economy may be generating.
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
No Bid Government Contracts / Politics / Government Spending
By: BATR
Corporatocracy is distinctly the dominate practice when it comes to doing business with the federal government. The once embryonic relationships between favored companies and agency bureaucrats, have germinated into distinctive hybrid organisms. Grafting into self-generating species resistant and virtually immune from pest control methods can be found in every area of government expenditures. The big daddy of cozy dealing is that preverbal military-industrial-security complex.
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
U.S. Taxes, Entitlements and Federal Debt: The CBO’s Latest Projections / Interest-Rates / Government Spending
By: PhilStockWorld
Courtesy of Doug Short: This morning the Congressional Budget Office published its Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024, available as a 175-page PDF file. The main body of the document is divided into four parts: The Budget Outlook, The Economic Outlook, The Spending Outlook and The Revenue Outlook. The Appendix, which constitutes over half the document, covers a range of topics, including four decades of historical data.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Warfare, Welfare, and Wonder Woman - How Congress Spends Your Money / Politics / Government Spending
By: Dr_Ron_Paul
Supporters of warfare, welfare, and Wonder Woman cheered last week as Congress passed a one trillion dollar "omnibus" appropriation bill. This legislation funds the operations of government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Wonder Woman fans can cheer that buried in the bill was a $10,000 grant for a theater program to explore the comic book heroine.
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Tuesday, November 05, 2013
U.S. Unfunded Liabilities The Coming Big Squeeze on Your Wallet / Politics / Government Spending
By: Don_Miller
As the politicos in Washington continue to move the deck chairs around on the Titanic, ignoring the monster iceberg in plain sight, I'm keeping my eyes wide open. Here are a few tidbits from a recently published Social Security Administration factsheet:
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
U.S. Government to Run Budget Deficit Until 2038; How Can Money Printing Stop? / Politics / Government Spending
By: DailyGainsLetter
Mohammad Zulfiqar writes: The stock market is certainly getting all the attention these days, but not a lot is said about other disturbing fundamentals. These fundamentals are troublesome, and if they aren’t fixed, the U.S. economy could end up in a downward spiral in a very short period of time. With these conditions, those who are saving and investing for the long term can face a significant amount of scrutiny.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The Postal Worker Assumed the Gun Wasn’t Loaded / Politics / Government Spending
By: Don_Miller
A man with a wooden leg worked with my dad at the post office. I could even hear his leg creak as he limped along. Remember, this was long before I needed a hearing aid. When I asked if he'd lost his leg in the war, my dad said "no." It was a hunting accident. Then he launched into a lecture on gun safety. "He assumed the gun was not loaded, and now he is crippled for life."
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Do U.S. Taxpayers Want to Pay For the Shut Down Government Services? / Politics / Government Spending
By: MISES
Ryan McMaken writes: There is a common assumption among politicians that voters want a lot of government services, but don’t want to pay for them. It’s certainly true that taxpayers don’t like paying taxes, and this is demonstrated in the fact that the federal government runs a deficit virtually every single year. If the taxpayers didn’t mind paying the full cost of government, the feds would be able to collect enough in revenue to pay the bills. As it is, the political realities of public opposition to taxation drive the feds to resort to deficit spending to cover their costs.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Ridiculous Ways U.S. Government Shutdown Will Affect You / Politics / Government Spending
By: Jeff_Berwick
Millions around the world today are hoping the US federal government shuts down at midnight on Monday. Many have thoughts of wars and occupations ending in their regions... but, sadly, this is not part of the "services" that will be cut during a shutdown.
In fact, not only will the Department of Offense continue on as usual but so will all the tyrannical agencies such as the DEA, IRS, ATF, CIA and countless other alphabet soup agencies of oppression.
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
Examples of Wasteful U.S. Government Spending: Duplicate Programs Squander Billions / Politics / Government Spending
By: Money_Morning
David Zeiler writes: So many federal agencies are duplicating one another's efforts in so many different areas that the billions lost to such wasteful government spending is impossible to calculate.
A recent report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office uncovered 162 areas of duplicate spending, which at minimum wastes tens of billions of dollars every year.
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Thursday, April 11, 2013
Alarming Growth in Americans "on Disability" Could Bankrupt Social Security / Politics / Government Spending
By: Money_Morning
Ben Gersten writes:Since the start of the recession in December 2007, one in four workers who stopped looking for employment and dropped out of the U.S. labor force found another source of money: collecting disability from Social Security.
And in that same time span, the number of Americans receiving benefits from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program has grown by more than 25%.
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Nanny Society - Loser Economy / Economics / Government Spending
By: Andrew_McKillop
EPIDEMIC STATUS
Wikipedia defines "the nanny state" as a system or process where governments play the role that a nanny has in child rearing. This could seem good, but as early as 1965 British MP Iain Macleod lashed out at the underside of the nanny state: authoritarian, interfering, overprotective, repressive. Since then, this politically correct mix has taken over in almost all Western states, becoming ever more intense, and is now a sure and certain driver of economic failure. The process is simple: the state "babies" its governed population, but pretends to be aghast at the consequences when it finds out that creating and sustaining a nation of zombies with no interest in creating wealth - only consuming it - is a loser.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
U.S. Fiscal Farce, Failure, Fantasy & Fornication Forecasts 2013 / Politics / Government Spending
By: James_Quinn
I’ve put off writing an article about what is likely to happen in 2013 so I could peruse the thousands of other articles by reputable bloggers, paid pundits, Wall Street shills and captured charlatans to gather their wisdom. It’s essential that I make predictions for 2013 so I can write another article in December rationalizing why 90% of my predictions failed to materialize. Reading all of these 2013 prediction articles made things much clearer for me. I now know for sure:
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
The Economics of Sequestration / Politics / Government Spending
By: BATR
Delaying the sequester process for two months confirms that business as usual is well on Capital Hill. The egregious idea of abiding by a former deal that would trigger automatic spending cuts is just too much for Congressional leaders to bear. March 1, 2013 is said to be the new due date. Senatorial magic escapes any semblance of facing up to the obvious. Administration spending is so habitual that even a government shutdown is immune from observance. The true economics of sequestration centers within the next imaginative episode of delay and denial. It is little wonder that commerce and business is a far more risky endeavor, when the principal problem of the national debt is abnegated as an excessive spending crisis.
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