Does Government Have a Revenue or Spending Problem?
People say the government has a debt problem. Debt is caused by deficits, which is the difference between what the government collects in tax revenue and the amount of government spending. Every time the government runs a deficit, the government debt increases. So what’s to blame: too much spending, or too little tax revenue? Economics professor Antony Davies examines the data and concludes that the root cause of the debt is too much government spending.
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We got to cut wasteful spending out of the government and here is another fine suggestion from the Heritage Foundation.
March 12, 2013 at 5:40 pm
Newscom
The massive spending bill, or continuing resolution, released by the Senate this week continues spending on programs which are inappropriate or wasteful and fails to adopt good policies in many areas. Here’s a rundown of some of the worst offenders in the Senate bill:
Housing and Urban Development Public Operating Fund: $562 million. The bill restores money from an FY 2012 cut to previous levels for a total 2013 funding request of $3.962 billion. The fund pays local public housing authorities annual subsidies for such things as maintenance, management, insurance and energy costs. These should be the responsibility of local jurisdictions.
—David C. John, Senior Research Fellow
This Cartoon Is Very Funny, but also Does a Great Job of Teaching Economics
April 18, 2011 by Dan Mitchell
Economists often do a crummy job of teaching people about the impact of fiscal policy on the labor force, largely because we put people to sleep with boring discussions about “labor supply” decisions (my blog post from last year perhaps being an example of this tendency).
From now on, I will try to remember to use this cartoon. It’s a parody of Obama’s policies, but the last slide (or is it a panel?) is a great teaching tool about what happens when politicians turn the safety net into a hammock.
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Spending problem for sure.