President Joe Biden rejects the notion that generous COVID-19 relief provisions, and state and local aid, create disincentives for work. Pictured: Biden addresses a joint session of Congress, with Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on the dais behind him, April 28, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Melina Mara-Pool/Getty Images)
“Experts” predicted 1 million jobs would be created in April. The actual number fell far short, at 266,000. Republicans warned that overly generous COVID-19 relief benefits create a disincentive to work.
In earnings calls and business surveys, executives often blame stimulus checks and generous unemployment benefits for hampering hiring efforts. …
Friday’s employment report, which is projected to show the economy added 1 million jobs in April, should offer new insight into this mismatch and whether it’s deterring growth.
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When the numbers came in, Biden administration officials lacked no shortage of excuses. Some potential workers, they argued, feared going back to work because of COVID-19; many schools had still yet to resume in-school learning, particularly burdensome for single parents; we’re still early in the bounce back from the COVID-19-stricken economy; one month’s worth of numbers does not a story tell; and employers just need to raise wages.
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh urged perspective: “Well, you know, under normal circumstances, and certainly we’re not living in normal circumstances, the 266,000 job gain a month is a good number. Unfortunately, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic.”
President Joe Biden rejected the elephant-in-the-room possible explanation for the disappointingly low April job numbers—that the generous provisions in the COVID-19 relief packages, coupled with state and local aid, create a disincentive for people to go back to work. Biden dismissed “loose talk that Americans just don’t want to work. … The data shows that more workers are looking for jobs, and many can’t find them.”
>> Watch “Severely Disabled Man Suffers Consequences of Paying Americans Not to Work”:
But Bloomberg wrote, “Anyone who previously made less than $32,000 per year is better off financially in the near term receiving unemployment benefits, according to economists at Bank of America.”
Blog writers for the libertarian Cato Institute wrote: “Combined with state unemployment benefits, around 37 percent of workers can currently make more unemployed than in work. A low-income worker in Massachusetts previously earning $535 per week faced a pre-pandemic replacement rate of unemployment insurance benefits to earnings of 48 percent ($257). Now, the same worker would obtain benefits worth 104 percent of their pre-recession earnings ($557).”
But not to worry because, writes The Washington Post, a Labor Department spokesperson says his office “has not seen evidence” that the COVID-19 relief benefits incentivize people not to work.
Since when does the Biden administration require “data” or “evidence”?
Where is the evidence that a $15 minimum wagewill do more good than harm, given that the overwhelming consensus among economists is that minimum wage loss hurt the unskilled?
Where is the evidence that a $2.4 trillion “infrastructure investment” plan will do more good than harm, given the necessary massive tax increases?
Where is the evidence that universal pre-K for the poor will improve results for K-12, given the “fade out” effect that shows no long-term benefit?
There is, however, a great deal of evidence that burdening the economy with more taxes and regulations hurt growth. Eight years into the New Deal plan designed to rescue the economy from the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, wrote:
We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!
But as long as politicians, in the name of compassion, take money from one party to give to another; borrow money to be paid later with interest; and print money that ultimately triggers inflation, who needs evidence?
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Many academic studies show that extending unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness!!
Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money.
But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money.
The current debate about extending unemployment benefits is remarkable, though (at least from an economic perspective), because certain politicians want to give people money on the condition that they don’t get a job. Needless to say, that leads to a very perverse incentive structure.
There is a problem with joblessness, to be sure, but it’s misguided to think that extending unemployment benefits is the compassionate response.
Senator Paul and I wrote a column for USA Today about a better way of helping the unemployed. Looking at the empirical evidence, we argue that it’s time to unleash the private sector by reducing the burden of government.
The nation is enduring the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, 11 million people remain unemployed, and millions more have dropped out of the labor force. For minorities, it’s even worse. The black unemployment rate is more than twice that of whites. And the weak job market means that even those who are employed are having a hard time climbing the economic ladder.
We explain that more unemployment benefits is a misguided approach.
There’s a lot of talk about helping those down on their luck, but there’s a big divide on the best approach. Our view is that America needs a growth agenda based on reducing the burden of government. The unemployed need a strong job market, not endless handouts that create dependency. …There’s an understandable desire in Washington to “do something,” and extending benefits once again certainly is the easy route for policy makers. But if we are serious about keeping workers out of the long-term unemployment trap, we must have a debate about which policies cause unemployment and which policies create jobs.
And we definitely can’t overlook this superb Wizard-of-Id parody. It doesn’t focus specifically on unemployment benefits, but it makes a great point about labor supply incentives.
But let’s get back to the column. Our main goal is to identify the types of policies that would generate jobs and growth.
Simply stated, genuine compassion should be defined by helping people get back to work so they don’t need to be wards of the state.
And easing the burden of government is the best way to make that happen. Our column looks at some evidence – from both overseas and here at home – about the policies that are associated with better economic performance.
Big government is responsible for today’s unemployment situation. …Since President Obama was elected, we have spent $560 billion on unemployment benefits. It’s likely many more jobs would have been created had the government not diverted that money from the economy’s productive sector. …Instead of copying stagnant European nations with bigger public sectors, we should learn from countries that have achieved better performance by lowering the burden of government. Singapore and Hong Kong are examples of jurisdictions with small governments and free markets that enjoy strong and sustained growth with very low levels of joblessness. …look at Canada, which has significantly boosted its jobs market with pro-growth reforms, or Switzerland, which has cemented its traditionally strong labor markets with reforms to control the growth of government. This is not a partisan argument. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The United States enjoyed strong levels of job creation during both the Reagan and Clinton years. But in both cases, public policy was largely the same, featuring an increase in economic freedom.
Some people may wonder whether Reagan and Clinton belong in the same category.
And they both presided over periods with generally good economic policy.
Reagan moved the country in the right direction on purpose. Clinton, by contrast, may have wanted to move the nation in the other direction, but he was unsuccessful.Indeed, the evidence is very strong that the overall burden of government fell during his tenure.
Whether by accident or design, America needs another period of free markets and shrinking government.
For further details on the recipe for good policy, here’s the video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which explains the conditions that lead to strong and sustained growth.
Free Markets and Small Government Produce Prosperity
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2009
Now that the so-called stimulus has been enacted, hopefully policy makers will turn their attention to policies that actually improve economic performance. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video reviews the key finding in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and explains that, contrary to the policies of Presidents Bush and Obama, smaller government and free markets are the way to boost economic growth. For more information: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org
P.P.S. On a separate topic, I wrote in December 2012 that the strongest evidence for media bias is which stories get covered. A perfect example is that journalists already have given 17 times as much coverage of the Chris Christie “bridgegate” scandal as they gave to the IRS scandal over the past six months
______________ If you want to cut government waste then stop allowing people to get addicted to government programs!!!! November 3, 2013 1:07PM Lindbeck’s Law: The Self-Destructive Nature of Expanding Government Benefits By Alan Reynolds Share Relevant foresight from Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, “Hazardous Welfare State Dynamics,” American Economic Review, May 1995: The basic dilemma of […]
____________ Lots of Waste at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service!!!! November 5, 2013 12:50PM ICYMI: FMCS By Jim Harper Share During the hullaballoo around the government shutdown, the Washington Examiner published a jaw-dropping series of stories about blatant waste in an obscure federal agency called the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. These stories shouldn’t […]
(Emailed to White House on 3-15-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
We’re debating this issue again today, but it’s an even bigger problem because politicians in Washington have added a special bonus payment for people who stay unemployed.
So we’re naturally finding that people are more reluctant to work, which is a rational choice for many of them since they’re getting more money for sitting on their butts.
So if Krugman recognized back in 2009 that regular-sized unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness, he must be even more worried about today’s super-sized unemployment benefits.
But there’s a catch. Krugman made his sensible observations on this issue in a textbook when he was still an academic economist, back when he felt some professional obligation to be rational and pay attention to the academic evidence and empirical research.
Today, he’s an ideologue and polemicist. So we get nonsense like this column in the New York Times.
…the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy added only 266,000 jobs in April, far short of consensus expectations that we’d gain around a million new jobs. Was this evidence that the economy really is being held back because we’re “paying people not to work”?No. For one thing, you should never make much of one month’s numbers, especially in an economy still distorted by the pandemic. …Also, if unemployment benefits were holding job growth back, you’d expect the worst performance in low-wage industries, where benefits are large relative to wages. …on the face of it the data don’t support an unemployment-benefits story. So what actually happened? We don’t know. Maybe it was a statistical aberration.
For what it’s worth, I prefer the sober-minded analysis available in editorials from the Wall Street Journal.
Employers nationwide have complained for months that Washington’s $300-a-week bonus has made it harder to find willing workers. Yet Mr. Biden brushed aside the complaints, saying he and his staff “don’t see much evidence” that the payments are a “major factor.” …The perverse incentive of the bonus is clear, and the evidence goes beyond the anecdotes from tens of thousands of employers. …Bank of America economist Joseph Song notes that any worker earning less than $32,000 annually would get a raise by going on unemployment… The President intended his remarks to depict his Administration as the driver of job growth instead of its main hindrance. It was a tall order. But the bright side is that his urgent appearance showed that more Americans are figuring out that when the government pays people not to work, millions choose not to.
The good news is that some governors are opting out.
Here are some excerpts from a report in the Washington Post.
An unexpected slowdown in hiring nationwide has prompted some Republican governors to start slashing jobless benefits in their states, hoping that the loss of generous federal aid might force more people to try to return to work. …Arkansas on Friday became the latest to announce plans to cancel the extra benefits, joining Montana and South Carolina earlier in the week… Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signaled to local reporters that the state could soon follow suit, while Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is considering the same.
I’m tempted to comment about the Post‘s usual bias (saying GOP governors want to “slash” when they’re simply proposing to return to regular-sized benefits).
But let’s stick to the topic.
Here’s another interview on the issue, but it’s about the current fight rather than the Obama-era fight.
I’m especially concerned, as I noted in the interview, that bad government policy may erode the work ethic.
I’ll close with a comment about the fight we had during the Obama years. Back then, the battle revolved around extended unemployment benefits rather than turbo-charged benefits.
Republicans eventually prevailed in blocking the extended benefits. So what happened? As you might expect, there was an increase in employment.
P.S. I imagine this story from Michigan and this example from Ohio will ring a bell with many people because they have some relative or buddy who also has used government benefits as an excuse to stay unemployed.
Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money.
But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money.
The current debate about extending unemployment benefits is remarkable, though (at least from an economic perspective), because certain politicians want to give people money on the condition that they don’t get a job. Needless to say, that leads to a very perverse incentive structure.
There is a problem with joblessness, to be sure, but it’s misguided to think that extending unemployment benefits is the compassionate response.
Senator Paul and I wrote a column for USA Today about a better way of helping the unemployed. Looking at the empirical evidence, we argue that it’s time to unleash the private sector by reducing the burden of government.
The nation is enduring the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, 11 million people remain unemployed, and millions more have dropped out of the labor force. For minorities, it’s even worse. The black unemployment rate is more than twice that of whites. And the weak job market means that even those who are employed are having a hard time climbing the economic ladder.
We explain that more unemployment benefits is a misguided approach.
There’s a lot of talk about helping those down on their luck, but there’s a big divide on the best approach. Our view is that America needs a growth agenda based on reducing the burden of government. The unemployed need a strong job market, not endless handouts that create dependency. …There’s an understandable desire in Washington to “do something,” and extending benefits once again certainly is the easy route for policy makers. But if we are serious about keeping workers out of the long-term unemployment trap, we must have a debate about which policies cause unemployment and which policies create jobs.
And we definitely can’t overlook this superb Wizard-of-Id parody. It doesn’t focus specifically on unemployment benefits, but it makes a great point about labor supply incentives.
But let’s get back to the column. Our main goal is to identify the types of policies that would generate jobs and growth.
Simply stated, genuine compassion should be defined by helping people get back to work so they don’t need to be wards of the state.
And easing the burden of government is the best way to make that happen. Our column looks at some evidence – from both overseas and here at home – about the policies that are associated with better economic performance.
Big government is responsible for today’s unemployment situation. …Since President Obama was elected, we have spent $560 billion on unemployment benefits. It’s likely many more jobs would have been created had the government not diverted that money from the economy’s productive sector. …Instead of copying stagnant European nations with bigger public sectors, we should learn from countries that have achieved better performance by lowering the burden of government. Singapore and Hong Kong are examples of jurisdictions with small governments and free markets that enjoy strong and sustained growth with very low levels of joblessness. …look at Canada, which has significantly boosted its jobs market with pro-growth reforms, or Switzerland, which has cemented its traditionally strong labor markets with reforms to control the growth of government. This is not a partisan argument. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The United States enjoyed strong levels of job creation during both the Reagan and Clinton years. But in both cases, public policy was largely the same, featuring an increase in economic freedom.
Some people may wonder whether Reagan and Clinton belong in the same category.
And they both presided over periods with generally good economic policy.
Reagan moved the country in the right direction on purpose. Clinton, by contrast, may have wanted to move the nation in the other direction, but he was unsuccessful.Indeed, the evidence is very strong that the overall burden of government fell during his tenure.
Whether by accident or design, America needs another period of free markets and shrinking government.
For further details on the recipe for good policy, here’s the video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which explains the conditions that lead to strong and sustained growth.
Free Markets and Small Government Produce Prosperity
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2009
Now that the so-called stimulus has been enacted, hopefully policy makers will turn their attention to policies that actually improve economic performance. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video reviews the key finding in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and explains that, contrary to the policies of Presidents Bush and Obama, smaller government and free markets are the way to boost economic growth. For more information: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org
P.P.S. On a separate topic, I wrote in December 2012 that the strongest evidence for media bias is which stories get covered. A perfect example is that journalists already have given 17 times as much coverage of the Chris Christie “bridgegate” scandal as they gave to the IRS scandal over the past six months
______________ If you want to cut government waste then stop allowing people to get addicted to government programs!!!! November 3, 2013 1:07PM Lindbeck’s Law: The Self-Destructive Nature of Expanding Government Benefits By Alan Reynolds Share Relevant foresight from Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, “Hazardous Welfare State Dynamics,” American Economic Review, May 1995: The basic dilemma of […]
____________ Lots of Waste at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service!!!! November 5, 2013 12:50PM ICYMI: FMCS By Jim Harper Share During the hullaballoo around the government shutdown, the Washington Examiner published a jaw-dropping series of stories about blatant waste in an obscure federal agency called the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. These stories shouldn’t […]
(Emailed to White House on 3-15-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
So you won’t be surprised that I agree with the message in this video
To elaborate, one of the big lessons of the Trump era is that he undermined his good policies – such as tax reform – by imposing higher taxes on global trade.
To state the obvious, it’s not a bad thing when foreigners decide they want to invest in the United States economy. Heck, it’s a good thing, a sign of economic strength.
Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth made the same point, and many additional points, in a column for the Wall Street Journallate last year.
After four years, what have we learned? Many things, but especially that old economic truths still have value: Tariffs don’t reduce the trade deficit. …Economists have long pointed out that the trade deficit is driven by macroeconomic factors, particularly international capital flows. …The merchandise trade deficit was $864 billion in 2019, more than $100 billion higher than in 2016. …Tariffs are paid by consumers, destroy jobs and hurt the economy. Mr. Trump insisted that China would pay for the 15% to 25% duties that he imposed on $300 billion of its exports. In fact, the tariffs were passed on to American consumers, who paid more… Take steel. Higher prices might have saved some jobs in the steel industry, but..steel protection is a job-destroying policy. Economists at the Federal Reserve found that the steel and aluminum tariffs reduced overall employment in manufacturing by 75,000 workers.
But destroying jobs was just one negative effect of protectionism.
We also got more corruption, as the Wall Street Journalopined.
…it’s time to point out one unsightly effect of the Trump tariffs: expanding the D.C. swamp. …As Mr. Trump’s tariffs began to bite, Congress sent hundreds of letters to the USTR, supporting specific tariff exclusions. …Rep. Steny Hoyer signed a letter, “on behalf of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus,” asking for an exclusion on smoke alarms. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis sought one for Honda’s lawn mower flywheels. For Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, it was BedJet’s “ultra-thin adjustable bed ‘device.’” For Congressman Doug Collins, Home Depot’s light fixtures. For Sen. Patty Murray, empty coffee K-cup pods. Some of these exclusions were granted, and many weren’t. It’s difficult to know if lobbying by Congress made a difference… One substantial downside is more political interference in the economy. Pretty swampy.
We saw something very similar when President Obama was granting waivers for Obamacare. That was just one of the ways insiders got rich lobbying politicians for special treatment under government-run healthcare.
Let’s wrap this up.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal in March, Senator Pat Toomey and former Senator Phil Gramm conclude Trump’s protectionism was a failure.
In his first two years as president, Mr. Trump lifted regulatory burdens and pushed through a major tax cut, which triggered a broad-based rise in income and employment. He then turned to his protectionist agenda, which reduced economic growth and failed to deliver Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin in the 2020 election. Protectionism failed both as economic policy and political strategy. …As Mr. Trump found when he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum, the resulting increase in jobs in those industries was small. …Jobs gained in the steel and aluminum industries after the tariffs were dwarfed by jobs lost in industries that use steel and aluminum in their manufacturing process, not to mention the jobs lost due to foreign trade retaliation. …Innovation, technological development and the capacity of a market economy to adapt to change provide our only sure path to job creation and prosperity. This is a lesson all politicians, but especially Republicans, need to learn from the economic and political failure of protectionism in the Trump era.
Amen.
Protectionism didn’t work. It didn’t create jobs, and it didn’t even buy votes.
The bottom line is that “Tariff Man” hurt himself and hurt the economy.
P.S. Sadly, Biden has not reversed many of Trump’s protectionist policies. But that’s not a surprise given his support for statism.
P.P.S. Though I hold out some hope that Biden will utilize the World Trade Organization as a tool to expand trade, thus reversing one of Trump’s mistakes.
My response is easy. I care about results rather than rhetoric. And while GOP politicians often pay lip service to the principles of limited government,they usually increase spending even faster than Democrats.
This is bad news because it means the burden of government expands when Republicans are in charge.
And, as Gary Abernathy points out in a column for the Washington Post, Republicans then don’t have the moral authority to complain when Democrats engage in spending binges.
President Biden is proposing another $3 trillion in spending… There are objections, but none that can be taken seriously. …Republicans had lost their standing as the party of fiscal responsibility when most of them succumbed to the political virus of covid fever and rubber-stamped around $4 trillion in “covid relief,”… With Trump out and Biden in, Republicans suddenly pretended that their 2020 spending spree happened in some alternate universe.But the GOP’s united opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion package won’t wash off the stench of the hypocrisy. …I noted a year ago that we had crossed the Rubicon, that our longtime flirtation with socialism had become a permanent relationship. Congratulations, Bernie Sanders. The GOP won’t become irrelevant because of its association with Trump, as some predict. It will diminish because it is bizarrely opposing now that which it helped make palatable just last year. Fiscal responsibility is dead, and Republicans helped bury it. Put the shovels away, there’s no digging it up now.
For what it’s worth, I hope genuine fiscal responsibility isn’t dead.
Maybe it’s been hibernating ever since Reagan left office (like Pepperidge Farm, I’m old enough to remember those wonderful years).
Subsequent Republican presidents liked to copy Reagan’s rhetoric, but they definitely didn’t copy his policies.
Spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
Spending restraint also was hibernating during the presidency of George W. Bush.
And spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of Donald Trump.
I’m not the only one to notice GOP hypocrisy.
Here are some excerpts from a 2019 column in the Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria.
In what Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government — Trump has been profoundly unconservative. …Trump has now added more than $88 billion in taxes in the form of tariffs, according to the right-leaning Tax Foundation. (Despite what the president says, tariffs are taxes on foreign goods paid by U.S. consumers.) This has had the effect of reducing gross domestic product and denting the wages of Americans.…For decades, conservatives including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan preached to the world the virtues of free trade. But perhaps even more, they believed in the idea that governments should not pick winners and losers in the economy… Yet the Trump administration…behaved like a Central Planning Agency, granting exemptions on tariffs to favored companies and industries, while refusing them to others. …In true Soviet style, lobbyists, lawyers and corporate executives now line up to petition government officials for these treasured waivers, which are granted in an opaque process… On the core issue that used to define the GOP — economics — the party’s agenda today is state planning and crony capitalism.
Zakaria is right about Republicans going along with most of Trump’s bad policies (as illustrated by this cartoon strip).*
The bottom line is that Republicans would be much more effective arguing against Biden’s spending orgy had they also argued for spending restraint when Trump was in the White House.
If they make the wrong choice (anything other than Reaganism), Margaret Thatcher has already warned us about the consequences.
*To be fair, Republicans also went along with Trump’s good policies. It’s just unfortunate that spending restraint wasn’t one of them.
—-
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
_______
Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
_____________
_________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
It appears that only a fraction of the spending proposed in a new $3 trillion to $4 trillion bill would go toward an already too-expansive definition of infrastructure. Pictured: Engineers discuss the progress of an infrastructure construction project. (Photo: Sornranison Prakittrakoon/ Moment/Getty Images)
The media were flooded Monday with news that the Biden administration is working on a colossal new $3 trillion to $4 trillion spending plan.
While full details are not available yet, the plan appears to be another left-wing grab bag of big-government proposals. Rather than stimulating the economy, it would stimulate bigger government while funneling unprecedented amounts of power and money through the hands of politicians in Washington.
All this comes on the heels of President Joe Biden signing into law on March 11 a badly flawed $1.9 trillion legislative package that was originally marketed as a COVID-19 response, but which was more focused on left-wing pet causes, such as bailouts for union pension plans and unnecessary handouts for state governments.
Just a day later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., released a statement calling for bipartisan work on legislation that would focus on infrastructure. While there were good reasons to question how beneficial or “bipartisan” such legislation would be, there was at least a chance of finding some across-the-aisle support.
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But the potential for bipartisanship was quickly scuttled by news of the latest multitrillion-dollar plan.
It would be bad enough if the latest plan was just a big-spending infrastructure package. However, it appears that only a fraction of the new spending would go toward an already too-expansive definition of infrastructure.
Instead, most of the new spending and tax subsidies would go toward expanding the welfare state, including “free” tuition for community colleges, “free” child care, and other handouts that lack right-of-center support.
This would likely be the largest expansion of the federal government since the “Great Society” of the 1960s, even eclipsing Obamacare in scope.
Reports indicate that Democrats might attempt to split the plan into two bills—one focused on social spending that passes narrowly along party lines, the other focused on actual infrastructure aimed at winning bipartisan support.
However, it’s clear that the $3 trillion-plus total price tag is already souring prospects for bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
House Republicans boycotted the annual Ways and Means Committee “Member’s Day” hearing on Tuesday in the wake of news reports on the plan, since they indicated that Democrats have already made up their minds to pursue as much spending as possible through the legislative procedure known as reconciliation.
Coincidentally, two respected nonpartisan groups released reports this week that show why Biden and Pelosi should pause their aggressive agenda.
First, the Congressional Budget Office published a paper demonstrating what would happen if a sustained increase in federal spending were coupled with big tax increases to pay for the spending.
While the analysis points to different long-term effects from different types of taxes, any tax-and-spend approach would lead to reductions in economic growth and personal income that are larger than the size of the tax hikes.
For example, the analysis found that having 10% more federal government would mean a 12% to 19% reduction in personal consumption.
And that’s a conservative estimate. Most estimates show tax hikes shrink the economy by two to three times more than the revenues they raise.
That doesn’t mean Congress could escape the consequences of a continued spending spree by simply adding to the national debt. The CBO paper cautions that that would not only impose significant costs and divert resources away from the private sector, but it also would be unsustainable and increase the risk of a devastating financial crisis.
Along the same lines, the Government Accountability Office released a sobering reporton the nation’s poor financial health.
Now that Congress has passed a combined total of $6 trillion in legislation in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (more than $48,000 per household), it must quickly address the unsustainable growth of major benefit programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Even before the pandemic struck, these programs were on a path to bankruptcy. Addressing these shortfalls in a way that is fair to both current retirees and future generations who will have to foot the bill is one of the greatest policy challenges facing the nation.
Unfortunately, Washington is exacerbating the problem by adding excessively to the national debt and potentially stunting economic growth with higher taxes.
While the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it will only seek to raise taxes on the wealthy, a government of the size that it’s seeking would require amounts of money that can only be generated through steep across-the-board tax increases on middle-class Americans.
Regardless of whether those taxes are levied tomorrow or in a few years, they would be an inevitable part of expanding the size and scope of the federal government.
Rather than continuing down the path of centralized power and socialism, lawmakers should recognize the costs associated with endless federal spending and chart a course toward financial responsibility and prosperity.
If they don’t, it will be the public’s duty to hold them accountable.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we will consider publishing your remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature.
—
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
_______
Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
_____________
_________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
The California high‐speed rail project was originally projected to cost $25 billion and is now projected to cost $100 billion. It was originally expected to be complete by 2020; now they are saying some time in the 2030s. Since they don’t have the money to complete it, it may never get done, and the part that will be finished serves the least‐populated part of the route.
Hawaii has its own rail debacle that sounds like California’s system on a smaller scale. Honolulu decided to build a rail transit line that was originally projected to cost less than $3 billion. The latest estimates are that it will cost $12 billion including finance charges. The line was supposed to open in 2020; now they are saying 2031. But that date may be irrelevant because the transit agency building the project is $3 billion short of what is needed to finish it, and the part that will be finished serves the least‐populated part of the route.
These two examples are a little extreme, but rail transit projects on average cost about 50 percent more than their original projections and very few end up costing less than 20 percent more than projected. While it is too soon to tell for California or Honolulu rail, ridership projections also average 70 percent more than actual ridership. A planning process that systematically overestimates benefits and underestimates costs is effectively biased towards capital intensive, high‐cost projects.
This makes it particularly frightening that the Biden infrastructure plan calls for spending $85 billion more on transit. Transit carries only 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States and zero percent of freight, yet under Biden’s plan it would get nearly as much money as highways, which carry more than 85 percent of passenger travel and nearly 40 percent of the nation’s freight.
Biden’s proposal specifically calls for bringing “rail service to communities and neighborhoods across the country.” But rail transit was rendered obsolete by buses nearly a century ago, which is why between 1920 and 1975 around a thousand cities replaced rail lines with buses. Only when the federal government agreed to pay part of the cost of building new rail lines did many transit agencies get interested in new rail transit construction. Since then, the number of cities with rail transit has quintupled.
This is just one way in which the Biden infrastructure plan will waste money. Another is a “fix‐it first” provision associated with Biden’s proposed highway spending. Although highways nominally get a little more money than transit ($115 billion vs. $85 billion), the “fix it first” rule means that states will not be able to build new roads until all existing roads are considered to be in good condition. No such rule will be applied to transit.
In fact, America’s state highways and bridges are already in pretty good condition. The number of bridges rated to be in “poor” condition has declined from 124,000 in 1992to 45,000 in 2020. The average roughness of pavement has also declined, meaning fewer potholes. These improvements were made without a giant infrastructure bill.
Transit infrastructure, meanwhile, is in terrible shape and deteriorating faster than agencies are maintaining it. The latest estimate is that transit needs $174 billion to get into a state of good repair. (It would cost a lot less to convert most rail transit to buses, which could be done in most cities whose initials are not NYC without harming transit systems.) If a fix‐it first rule should be applied to anything, it would be transit.
An even more fundamental flaw with the Biden plan is that it completely ignores recent events, namely the pandemic. Even after everyone is vaccinated, it is expected that more people will work at home, fewer jobs will be located in downtowns, and more households will move to lower density areas. All of these changes hurt transit ridership, which is not likely to recover to more than about 75 percent of its pre‐pandemic levels. This is a bad time to increasing spending on transit infrastructure.
The federal government should stop giving cities incentives to build expensive rail transit lines they don’t need. If Congress really wants to help infrastructure, it should just give money to the states based on a formula that takes population, land area, and miles of passenger travel and freight shipping (or user fees) into account and let the states decide how to spend the money.
Which is why there should be no tax on capital gains, and a few nations sensibly take this approach.
But they’re outnumbered by countries that do impose this pernicious form of double taxation. For instance, the Tax Foundation has a new report about the level of capital gains taxation in Europe, which includes this very instructive map.
As you can see, some countries, such as Denmark (gee, what a surprise), have very punitive rates.
However, other nations (such as Switzerland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, and Slovenia) wisely don’t impose this form of double taxation.
If the United States was included, we would be in the middle of the pack. Actually, we would be a bit worse than average, especially when you include the Obamacare tax on capital gains.
But if Joe Biden succeeds, the United States soon will have the dubious honor of being the worst of the worst.
The Wall Street Journalopined this morning about the grim news.
Biden officials leaked that they will soon propose raising the federal tax on capital gains to 43.4% from a top rate of 23.8% today. …Mr. Biden will tax capital gains for taxpayers who earn more than $1 million at the personal income tax rate, which he also wants to raise to 39.6% from 37%.Add the 3.8% ObamaCare tax on investment, and you get to 43.4%. And that’s merely the federal rate. Add 13.3% in California and 11.85% in New York (plus 3.88% in New York City), which also tax capital gains as regular income, and you are heading toward the 60% rate range. Keep in mind this is on the sale of gains that are often inflated as assets are held for years without adjustment for inflation. Oh, and Mr. Biden also wants to eliminate the step-up in basis on capital gains that accrues at death.
Beating out Denmark for the highest capital gains tax rate is bad.
But it’s even worse when you realize that capital gains often occur because investors expect an asset to generate more future income. But that future income gets hit by the corporate income tax (as well as the tax on dividends) when it actually materializes.
And I also recommend these columns (here, here, and here) for additional information on why we should be eliminating the capital gains tax rather than increasing it.
P.S. Don’t forget that there’s no indexing to protect taxpayersfrom having to pay tax on gains that are due only to inflation.
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Is our country learning from history? California keeps raising their taxes on the wealthy and people keep moving from California to Texas. What does our federal government do? They also have been raising taxes on the wealthy lately. Take a look at this excellent video below and then read a great article by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute on what is happening in California right now.
Will Higher Tax Rates Balance the Budget?
Published on Apr 11, 2012
As the U.S. debt and deficit grows, some politicians and economist have called for higher tax rates in order to balance the budget. The question becomes: when the government raises taxes, does it actually collect a larger portion of the US economy?
Professor Antony Davies examines 50 years of economic data and finds that regardless of tax rates, the percentage of GDP that the government collects has remained relatively constant. In other words, no matter how high government sets tax rates, the government gets about the same portion. According to Davies, if we’re concerned about balancing the budget, we should worry less about raising tax revenue and more about growing the economy. The recipe for growth? Lower tax rates and a simplified tax code.
Like most people, I’m a sucker for a heartwarming story around the holidays.
Sometimes, you get that nice feeling when good things happen to good people, like you find at the end of a classic movie like “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
But since I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, I also feel all warm and fuzzy when bad things happen to bad people.
That’s why I always smile when I read stories about taxpayers moving across borders, thus preventing greedy tax-hiking politicians from collecting more revenue.
I smile because I envision the moment when some budget geek tells these sleazy politicians that projected revenues aren’t materializing and they don’t have more money to spend.
So I wish I could be a fly on the wall when this moment of truth happens to California politicians. They convinced voters in the state to enact Prop 30, a huge tax increase targeting those evil, awful, bad rich people.
Governor Brown and his fellow kleptocrats in Sacramento doubtlessly are salivating at the thought of more money to waste.
But notwithstanding a satirical suggestion from Walter Williams, there aren’t guard towers and barbed-wire fences surrounding the state. Productive people can leave, and that’s happening every day. And they take their taxable income with them.
Usually in ways that don’t attract attention. But sometimes a bunch of them leave at the same times, and that is newsworthy. Here’s an example of that happening, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Chevron Corp. will move up to 800 jobs – about a quarter of its current headquarters staff – from the Bay Area to Houston over the next two years but will remain based in San Ramon, the oil company told employees Thursday. …The company already employs far more people in Houston – about 9,000 full-time employees and contractors – than it does in San Ramon.
We don’t know a lot of details, but these were positions at the company’s headquarters and they were “technical positions dealing with information and advanced energy technologies…tied to Chevron’s worldwide oil exploration and production business.”
Let’s assume these highly skilled employees earn an average of $250,000. I imagine that’s a low-ball estimate, but this is just for purposes of a thought experiment. Now multiply that average salary by 800 workers and you get $200 million of income.
And every penny of that $200 million no longer will be subject to tax by the kleptocrats in the state’s capital.
What’s happening in a big way with Chevron is happening in small ways every single day with investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other “rich’ people.
That’s good for the people escaping. And it also will warm my heart when California’s despicable politicians discover next year that there’s an “unexpected” revenue shortfall.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on […]
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
The federal government has a spending problem and Milton Friedman came up with the negative income tax to help poor people get out of the welfare trap. It seems that the government screws up about everything. Then why is President Obama wanting more taxes? _______________ Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on […]
I was sad to read that the Speaker John Boehner has been involved in punishing tea party republicans. Actually I have written letters to several of these same tea party heroes telling them that I have emailed Boehner encouraging him to listen to them. Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ),Justin Amash (R-MI), and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). have been contacted […]
Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 to 2012, it rose faster than inflation and population growth combined. […]
Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 to 2012, it rose faster than inflation and population growth combined. […]
Some of the heroes are Mo Brooks, Martha Roby, Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, Duncan Hunter, Tom Mcclintock, Devin Nunes, Scott Tipton, Bill Posey, Steve Southerland and those others below in the following posts. THEY VOTED AGAINST THE DEBT CEILING INCREASE IN 2011 AND WE NEED THAT TYPE OF LEADERSHIP NOW SINCE PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS BEEN […]
I hated to see that Allen West may be on the way out. ABC News reported: Nov 7, 2012 7:20am What Happened to the Tea Party (and the Blue Dogs?) Some of the Republican Party‘s most controversial House members are clinging to narrow leads in races where only a few votes are left to count. […]
Rep Himes and Rep Schweikert Discuss the Debt and Budget Deal Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 […]
I also explained why a Swiss-style spending cap could have saved Greece and Italy from fiscal crisis. Here’s that part of the discussion.
For those not familiar with spending caps, this six-minute videotells you everything you need to know.
Simply stated, this policy requires politicians to abide by fiscal policy’s Golden Rule, meaning that – on average – government spending grows slower than the private economy.
And that’s a very effective recipe for a lower burden of spending and falling levels of red ink.
One of the points I made in the video is that spending caps would prevented the fiscal mess in Greece and Italy.
To show what I mean, I went to the International Monetary Funds World Economic Outlookdatabase and downloaded the historical budget data for those two nations. I then created charts showing actual spending starting in 1988 compared to how much spending would have grown if there was a requirement that the budget could only increase by 2 percent each year.
Here are the shocking numbers for Greece.
The obvious takeaway is that there never would have been a fiscal crisis if Greece had a spending cap.
That also would be true even if the spending cap allowed 3-percent budget increases starting in 1998.
And it would be true if the 2-percent spending cap didn’t start until 2000.
There are all sorts of ways of adjusting the numbers. The bottom line is that any reasonable level of spending restraint could have prevented the horrible misery Greece has suffered.
Here are the numbers for Italy.
As you can see, the government budget has not increased nearly as fast in Italy as it did in Greece, but the burden of spending nonetheless has become more onerous – particularly when compared to what would have happened if there was a 2-percent spending cap.
I’ve written many times (here, here, here, and here) about Italy’s looming fiscal crisis. As I said in the interview, I don’t know when the house of cards will collapse, but it won’t be pretty.
And tax reform, while very desirable, is not going to avert that crisis. At least not unless it is combined with very serious spending restraint.
P.P.S. It’s also worth noting that the United States would be in a much stronger position today if we had enacted a spending capa couple of decades ago.
—
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
_______
Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
_____________
_________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
Way back in 2007, I narrated this video to explain why tax competition is very desirable because politicians are likely to overtax and overspend (“Goldfish Government“) if they think taxpayers have no ability to escape.
The good news is that tax competition has been working.
As explained in the above video, there have been big reductions in personal tax rates and corporate tax rates. Just as important, governments have reduced various forms of double taxation, meaning lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains.
These pro-growth tax reforms didn’t happen because politicians read my columns (I wish!). Instead, they adopted better tax policy because they were afraid of losing jobs and investment to countries with better fiscal policy.
Now for the bad news.
There’s been an ongoing campaign by high-tax governments to replace tax competition with tax harmonization. They’ve even conscripted international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to launch attacks against low-tax jurisdictions.
And now the United States is definitely on the wrong side of this issue.
Here’s some of what the Biden Administration wants.
The United States can lead the world to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. A minimum tax on U.S. corporations alone is insufficient. …President Biden is also proposing to encourage other countries to adopt strong minimum taxes on corporations, just like the United States, so that foreign corporations aren’t advantaged and foreign countries can’t try to get a competitive edge by serving as tax havens. This plan also denies deductions to foreign corporations…if they are based in a country that does not adopt a strong minimum tax. …The United States is now seeking a global agreement on a strong minimum tax through multilateral negotiations. This provision makes our commitment to a global minimum tax clear. The time has come to level the playing field and no longer allow countries to gain a competitive edge by slashing corporate tax rates.
As Charlie Brown would say, “good grief.” Those passages sound like they were written by someone in France, not America
And Heaven forbid that countries “gain a competitive edge by slashing corporate tax rates.” Quelle horreur!
There are three things to understand about this reprehensible initiative from the Biden Administration.
Tax harmonization means ever-increasing tax rates – It goes without saying that if politicians are able to create a tax cartel, it will merely be a matter of time before they ratchet up the tax rate. Simply stated, they won’t have to worry about an exodus of jobs and investment because all countries will be obliged to have the same bad approach.
Corporate tax harmonization will be followed by harmonization of other taxes – If the scheme for a harmonized corporate tax is imposed, the next step will be harmonized (and higher) tax rates on personal income, dividends, capital gains, and other forms of work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.
Tax harmonization denies poor countries the best path to prosperity – The western world became rich in the 1800s and early 1900s when there was very small government and no income taxes. That’s the path a few sensible jurisdictions want to copy today so they can bring prosperity to their people, but that won’t be possible in a world of tax harmonization.
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Is our country learning from history? California keeps raising their taxes on the wealthy and people keep moving from California to Texas. What does our federal government do? They also have been raising taxes on the wealthy lately. Take a look at this excellent video below and then read a great article by Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute on what is happening in California right now.
Will Higher Tax Rates Balance the Budget?
Published on Apr 11, 2012
As the U.S. debt and deficit grows, some politicians and economist have called for higher tax rates in order to balance the budget. The question becomes: when the government raises taxes, does it actually collect a larger portion of the US economy?
Professor Antony Davies examines 50 years of economic data and finds that regardless of tax rates, the percentage of GDP that the government collects has remained relatively constant. In other words, no matter how high government sets tax rates, the government gets about the same portion. According to Davies, if we’re concerned about balancing the budget, we should worry less about raising tax revenue and more about growing the economy. The recipe for growth? Lower tax rates and a simplified tax code.
Like most people, I’m a sucker for a heartwarming story around the holidays.
Sometimes, you get that nice feeling when good things happen to good people, like you find at the end of a classic movie like “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
But since I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, I also feel all warm and fuzzy when bad things happen to bad people.
That’s why I always smile when I read stories about taxpayers moving across borders, thus preventing greedy tax-hiking politicians from collecting more revenue.
I smile because I envision the moment when some budget geek tells these sleazy politicians that projected revenues aren’t materializing and they don’t have more money to spend.
So I wish I could be a fly on the wall when this moment of truth happens to California politicians. They convinced voters in the state to enact Prop 30, a huge tax increase targeting those evil, awful, bad rich people.
Governor Brown and his fellow kleptocrats in Sacramento doubtlessly are salivating at the thought of more money to waste.
But notwithstanding a satirical suggestion from Walter Williams, there aren’t guard towers and barbed-wire fences surrounding the state. Productive people can leave, and that’s happening every day. And they take their taxable income with them.
Usually in ways that don’t attract attention. But sometimes a bunch of them leave at the same times, and that is newsworthy. Here’s an example of that happening, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Chevron Corp. will move up to 800 jobs – about a quarter of its current headquarters staff – from the Bay Area to Houston over the next two years but will remain based in San Ramon, the oil company told employees Thursday. …The company already employs far more people in Houston – about 9,000 full-time employees and contractors – than it does in San Ramon.
We don’t know a lot of details, but these were positions at the company’s headquarters and they were “technical positions dealing with information and advanced energy technologies…tied to Chevron’s worldwide oil exploration and production business.”
Let’s assume these highly skilled employees earn an average of $250,000. I imagine that’s a low-ball estimate, but this is just for purposes of a thought experiment. Now multiply that average salary by 800 workers and you get $200 million of income.
And every penny of that $200 million no longer will be subject to tax by the kleptocrats in the state’s capital.
What’s happening in a big way with Chevron is happening in small ways every single day with investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other “rich’ people.
That’s good for the people escaping. And it also will warm my heart when California’s despicable politicians discover next year that there’s an “unexpected” revenue shortfall.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on […]
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
(Emailed to White House on 12-21-12) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is […]
The federal government has a spending problem and Milton Friedman came up with the negative income tax to help poor people get out of the welfare trap. It seems that the government screws up about everything. Then why is President Obama wanting more taxes? _______________ Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on […]
I was sad to read that the Speaker John Boehner has been involved in punishing tea party republicans. Actually I have written letters to several of these same tea party heroes telling them that I have emailed Boehner encouraging him to listen to them. Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ),Justin Amash (R-MI), and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). have been contacted […]
Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 to 2012, it rose faster than inflation and population growth combined. […]
Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 to 2012, it rose faster than inflation and population growth combined. […]
Some of the heroes are Mo Brooks, Martha Roby, Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, Duncan Hunter, Tom Mcclintock, Devin Nunes, Scott Tipton, Bill Posey, Steve Southerland and those others below in the following posts. THEY VOTED AGAINST THE DEBT CEILING INCREASE IN 2011 AND WE NEED THAT TYPE OF LEADERSHIP NOW SINCE PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS BEEN […]
I hated to see that Allen West may be on the way out. ABC News reported: Nov 7, 2012 7:20am What Happened to the Tea Party (and the Blue Dogs?) Some of the Republican Party‘s most controversial House members are clinging to narrow leads in races where only a few votes are left to count. […]
Rep Himes and Rep Schweikert Discuss the Debt and Budget Deal Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute in his article, “Hitting the Ceiling,” National Review Online, March 7, 2012 noted: After all, despite all the sturm und drang about spending cuts as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, federal spending not only increased from 2011 […]
Multitrillion-dollar spending program would reverse Reagan-era tacit understanding that public sector is less efficient than the private in allocating resources
WASHINGTON—President Biden envisions long-term federal spending claiming its biggest share of the American economy in decades. He wants to pay for that program in part by charging the highest-earning Americans the biggest tax rates they’ve faced in years.
The Biden economic team’s ambitions go beyond size to scope. The centerpiece of their program—a multitrillion-dollar proposal to be rolled out starting Wednesday, less than a month after a $1.9 trillion stimulus—seeks to give Washington a new commercial role in matters ranging from charging stations for electric vehicles to child care, and more responsibility for underwriting education, incomes and higher-paying jobs.
It all marks a major turning point for economic policy. The gamble underlying the agenda is a belief that government can be a primary driver for growth. It’s an attempt to recalibrate assumptions that have shaped economic policy of both parties since the 1980s: that the public sector is inherently less efficient than the private, and bureaucrats should generally defer to markets.
The administration’s sweeping plans reflect a calculation that “the risk of doing too little outweighs the risk of doing too much,” said White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese. “We’re going to be unapologetic about that,” he said. “Government must be a powerful force for good in the lives of Americans.”
The pandemic and lockdown measures that followed have become a Rorschach test for the new economic debate. Former President Donald Trumpargued that the booming economy of 2019 and early 2020 was proof his tax-cutting, deregulating agenda was the best for spurring broadly shared prosperity, and he portrayed the coronavirus and lockdowns as a temporary disruption. The Biden team sees the pandemic as exposing myriad flaws and fragilities that liberals had long identified in the economy, masked by prosperity.
Mr. Biden himself casts his program as a throwback to Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s Great Society and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. “This is the first time we’ve been able to, since the Johnson administration and maybe even before that, to begin to change the paradigm,” he said at a White House event in mid-March. Mr. Biden recently spoke with a group of prominent American historians, and his aides have studied FDR’s presidency as they plan his economic agenda.
Mr. Biden’s big plans raise big questions, and big risks. He faces an uphill battle to win over a narrowly divided Congress, with solid Republican opposition plus hesitancy among Democratic moderates who blanch at higher taxes and more spending following nearly $5 trillion in coronavirus relief outlays over the past year.
Conservative-tilting courts, increasingly skeptical of executive authority, might block some of his initiatives. Already, a coalition of Republican state attorneys general has sued to challenge some provisions of the stimulus program and some of his executive orders.
Some economists consider the latest spending plan an overkill response to the temporary, albeit severe, hit from the pandemic and lockdowns. They call recent stirrings in the bond market a warning that the vast increase in government spending and borrowing might prompt a return to the high-inflation/high-interest-rate stagnation of the late 1970s and early 1980s—conditions that fed the long-lasting backlash to expansive FDR-LBJ policies in the first place.
“They’re creating too much demand when it’s not needed. When demand runs away from supply, you get inflation,” said Kevin Hassett, a former Trump chief economic adviser now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “The laws of economics can’t be repealed,” he said.
The Biden agenda rests on the notion those laws have evolved. “There appear to have been a broad-based set of structural changes that have had a very significant effect on how the economy works,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. “There are a lot of ways in which I think our understanding of the economy has shifted.”
She cited persistently low interest rates and low inflation, defying many conventional forecasts, as reasons to feel more relaxed than before about federal borrowing and low unemployment rates. Ms. Yellen says there’s little sign inflation is in danger of escalating, and is confident that if it does, the Federal Reserve has the tools to contain it.
The administration’s policies are rooted in economic research focused on perceived free-market flaws, much of it conducted and funded by young, left-leaning economists and activists now scattered throughout the administration. Much of the Biden economic agenda is built around the conclusion that climate change in particular is a private-sector breakdown requiring extensive government intervention.
Before joining the Biden Council of Economic Advisers, Heather Boushey ran the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think tank devoted to persuading economists and policy makers to take action reducing income inequality. To her and many of her colleagues, the pandemic validates their studies on market failures.
“We’ve talked about inequality—it seems like an abstract concept, but in 2020, this notion of the K-shaped economy became so real,” Ms. Boushey said. She was referring to a recovery where the fortunes of upper-income families—able to keep their jobs, work from home and enjoy gains in their stock portfolios—rose like the letter’s upward-sloping part, while lower-income families were unable to keep jobs in hard-hit service industries such as restaurants.
Plans for selling the administration proposals lean heavily on fears of losing out to China’s model of state-driven capitalism, a concern that resonates across the political spectrum. “China is out-investing us by a long shot, because their plan is to own that future,” Mr. Biden said recently in previewing his program.
In a Wednesday speech in Pittsburgh, the president is preparing to unveil the first part of an economic proposal that would cost $3 trillion or more over 10 years and might be split into multiple pieces of legislation, with more coming in April. The first measure will focus on infrastructure, climate change, domestic manufacturing and research and development. Mr. Biden will find ways to pay for the full cost of the first measure, the White House has said. The second measure will center on child care, healthcare and education.
‘There are a lot of ways in which I think our understanding of the economy has shifted,’ said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
The multipart package would include higher taxes on corporations, upper-income households and investors. It will call for huge investments in infrastructure and climate programs and provide for universal prekindergarten and tuition-free community college, people familiar with the plan said.
Most Republicans are expected to oppose it, and the president’s advisers are already discussing options for continuing to move some of his proposals without GOP support, including through the process known as budget reconciliation.
Mike Donilon, one of Mr. Biden’s closest advisers, acknowledged the challenges but argued the public supports action. “I don’t think the country is in much mood for relentless obstructionism,” he said.
Critics of big-government projects have long argued that bureaucrats are less skilled than market forces in allocating resources. “What they’re trying to do is re-establish government as a major positive force in the economy, and I believe government is a massive negative force” in it, said Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic adviser. “There really is a micromanagement of the economy from the left.”
Presidents of both parties, hesitant to micromanage, have long steered away from anything smacking of an industrial policy that attempts to bolster specific industries. Biden aides are more willing to target and support certain industries such as the health and high-tech sectors. “We are committed to using the levers of government to encourage more domestic production,” Mr. Deese said.
President Biden held notes on infrastructure while speaking during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on March 25.
PHOTO: OLIVER CONTRERAS/PRESS POOL
The president’s budget and regulatory proposals could disrupt major industries, boosting renewable-energy companies over fossil-fuel firms and expanding markets for emerging technologies. Business groups and Republicans warn that new regulations could stifle growth.
Mr. Biden’s stimulus bill added to federal debt that had already hit peacetime records under Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden has said his full agenda will ultimately be aimed at curbing government borrowing, through tax increases and savings in medical spending.
That will be a challenge. Federal debt, which reached 100% of gross domestic product last fiscal year for the first time since 1946, is expected to rise to a record 107% of economic output by 2031, according to the Congressional Budget Office, fueling concerns that future generations will get stuck with the bill. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in March that the federal government can manage its debt at current levels, but policy makers should seek to slow its growth once the economy is stronger.
The long-dominant paradigm Mr. Biden and aides want to change is one widely branded neoliberalism, framed by Ronald Reagan, who declared in his 1981 inaugural address that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He ushered in an era of tax cuts, deregulation and federal programs increasingly designed to work through market forces. That was followed by two of the longest expansions in American history, in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Ronald Reagan speaking at his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
While Democrats controlled the White House for nearly half the time since then, their policies often were constrained by the core Reagan principles, in the view of many progressives. Bill Clinton tried to juggle liberal goals with a focus on balancing the budget, expanding free trade, and deregulating the financial sector. Barack Obama created a new government health program, but to the chagrin of the left, worked through private insurers. His 2009 program to fight the recession was constrained by fears of big deficits.
“For decades now, people have talked about economics as running against government, ignoring how much we need government to be able to build out opportunities,” said Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who, as an Obama adviser, often tangled with his aides over how aggressively to rein in Wall Street and support homeowners slammed by the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
A confluence of forces since the turn of the century has shaken support for the market-oriented economic model. A sharp increase in income and wealth inequality, combined with longtime wage stagnation that ended just before the pandemic hit, raised questions about how broadly prosperity gets shared absent government intervention. The swift loss of manufacturing jobs undermined support for free trade. China’s success and Wall Street’s collapse in the financial crisis further sowed doubts about free markets.
Those trends animated critics on the left, fueling the 2016 presidential campaigns of self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the rise to prominence of his allies such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Republicans, too, have faced internal challenges to the party’s free-market orientation. Mr. Trump won the presidency in part by attacking bipartisan support for globalization. In office, he launched a trade war with China, regularly criticized big business and intervened to force domestic investments and pressure companies to relocate manufacturing to the U.S. and cut prices of drugs.
“Some establishment Republicans are too willing to do nothing at all with government. They see an all-natural, organic market having its way,” said Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley. Mr. Hawley, a Trump supporter and possible presidential contender, has called for tougher antitrust laws to break up big tech companies and co-sponsored a bill last year with Mr. Sanders to give households $1,200 direct payments.
The first-term senator voted against the latest stimulus bill and opposes many of Mr. Biden’s policies, but he also says that “old-style conservatives have been too quick to wave away policies to strengthen American workers and promote competition rather than monopolies.”
Trends such as wealth disparities and wage stagnation animated the presidential candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, seen here speaking at a rally in Manchester, N.H., in August 2015.
PHOTO: RICK FRIEDMAN/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES
While many of those urging an economic rethink are relatively new voices in the debate, some pillars of the establishment have evolved, including former senior economic aides in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Another Washington veteran whose positions have changed: Joe Biden.
Elected to the Senate in 1972 at age 29, Mr. Biden ousted a Republican incumbent in part by casting himself as more attuned to the needs of the middle class, a theme that became a through-line of his career. He has long espoused the importance of unions, small businesses and a strong working class.
Mr. Biden juggled those causes with a belief in the need to curb government spending and cut taxes. He voted for Mr. Reagan’s historic 1981 tax cuts and backed spending ceilings for most agencies through the 1980s and a balanced-budget constitutional amendment in the 1990s. He regularly floated the idea of limiting Social Security and Medicare.
“For years, a lot of us subscribed to the notion that Milton Friedman warned us about,” that government would harm the economy if it didn’t take a light-touch approach to business, said former Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, a longtime Biden friend, referring to the economist who helped define the small-government neoliberal philosophy.
As Mr. Obama’s vice president during the financial crisis, Mr. Biden walked a tightrope between pushing for spending, especially on infrastructure, and taking the lead in negotiating with Republicans to limit the extent of government expansion. Toward the end of his term, the persistently slow recovery prompted the vice president and his aides to launch a study of wage stagnation, income inequality and ways the government could steer business to do more for workers. That work planted the seeds for his current program.
Joe Biden was first elected to the Senate from Delaware in 1972 after a campaign in which he cast himself as attuned to the needs of the working class.
PHOTO: HENRY GRIFFIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Biden started his 2019 presidential bid determined to lay out more of a big-government agenda than recent Democrats had espoused. But much of the primary field had moved even farther left. He emerged once again as the fiscal scold warning of excessive spending.
The arrival of the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd marked a turning point for Mr. Biden, according to his advisers, bringing into focus what his aides describe as his longstanding desire to “go big.”
Mr. Biden tapped his longtime friend and successor as Delaware senator, Ted Kaufman, to run the transition, and in helping assemble the economic team, Mr. Kaufman said his team focused on people steeped in new economic thinking and steered away from business executives.
“I looked at people who had internalized what Joe Biden’s policy was about, and Joe Biden’s policy was not about taking care of Wall Street or people making over $400,000 a year,” Mr. Kaufman said.
The middle ranks of the administration are filled with academics and activists who have spent the past few years honing a framework for progressive economic policy-making. In March 2019, many of them gathered at a Washington conference called “Bold v. Old.” A panel on toughening antitrust enforcement was led by Jennifer Harris, an official with the Hewlett Foundation—a philanthropy created by one of the founders of Hewlett-PackardCo. —overseeing a program funding researchers seeking to replace the neoliberal paradigm. She was joined by Lina Khan, a young law professor known for laying out the case for breaking upAmazon.com Inc., and Sabeel Rahman, president of Demos, a progressive think tank.
Ms. Harris has joined the Biden National Economic Council. Ms. Khan has been nominated to the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Rahman works at the Office of Management and Budget.
President Biden at his first press conference as president on March 25.
PHOTO: OLIVER CONTRERAS/PRESS POOL
A change in the Biden approach to economics is a re-evaluation of the costs of government action, which his team says have receded or always been exaggerated. And on the other side of the equation: an assertion that the cost of inaction is greater than previously estimated.
Progressive economists have generated rafts of research, often contested by conservatives, challenging the links between higher tax rates and lower economic activity. “The evidence suggests that the impact of marginal tax rates on labor supply is not as big as we may have once feared,” said Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
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Liberal academics have produced studies examining the costs to the economy’s productive capacity from inequality and long-term unemployment, work invoked by the Biden team to justify spending big and fast to try to return to full employment as soon as next year. Some critics, including former Clinton and Obama economic adviser Lawrence Summers, have said that spending too aggressively to drive down unemployment could backfire, possibly prompting the Fed to raise interest rates and trigger a recession.
This more relaxed view of previous economic limits has freed the Biden team to plan on a grand scale. They designed a two-step strategy that began with the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which provided $1,400 direct payments to many Americans, extended a $300 weekly jobless-aid supplement, expanded the child tax credit to provide periodic payments and dropped requirements that recipients work.
That was a symbolically significant shift from the Clinton-era move to tie welfare to work and a nod to the burgeoning progressive demands for a no-strings-attached guaranteed government income floor, at least for families with children.
Biden aides are also preparing an aggressive plan of new regulations and enforcement that can be implemented without Congress.
“The president campaigned on concerns about big tech, about labor market competition, about making sure small businesses can compete with the bigger guys,” Mr. Ramamurti said. “The president has a clear agenda there.”
It appears that only a fraction of the spending proposed in a new $3 trillion to $4 trillion bill would go toward an already too-expansive definition of infrastructure. Pictured: Engineers discuss the progress of an infrastructure construction project. (Photo: Sornranison Prakittrakoon/ Moment/Getty Images)
The media were flooded Monday with news that the Biden administration is working on a colossal new $3 trillion to $4 trillion spending plan.
While full details are not available yet, the plan appears to be another left-wing grab bag of big-government proposals. Rather than stimulating the economy, it would stimulate bigger government while funneling unprecedented amounts of power and money through the hands of politicians in Washington.
All this comes on the heels of President Joe Biden signing into law on March 11 a badly flawed $1.9 trillion legislative package that was originally marketed as a COVID-19 response, but which was more focused on left-wing pet causes, such as bailouts for union pension plans and unnecessary handouts for state governments.
Just a day later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., released a statement calling for bipartisan work on legislation that would focus on infrastructure. While there were good reasons to question how beneficial or “bipartisan” such legislation would be, there was at least a chance of finding some across-the-aisle support.
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But the potential for bipartisanship was quickly scuttled by news of the latest multitrillion-dollar plan.
It would be bad enough if the latest plan was just a big-spending infrastructure package. However, it appears that only a fraction of the new spending would go toward an already too-expansive definition of infrastructure.
Instead, most of the new spending and tax subsidies would go toward expanding the welfare state, including “free” tuition for community colleges, “free” child care, and other handouts that lack right-of-center support.
This would likely be the largest expansion of the federal government since the “Great Society” of the 1960s, even eclipsing Obamacare in scope.
Reports indicate that Democrats might attempt to split the plan into two bills—one focused on social spending that passes narrowly along party lines, the other focused on actual infrastructure aimed at winning bipartisan support.
However, it’s clear that the $3 trillion-plus total price tag is already souring prospects for bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
House Republicans boycotted the annual Ways and Means Committee “Member’s Day” hearing on Tuesday in the wake of news reports on the plan, since they indicated that Democrats have already made up their minds to pursue as much spending as possible through the legislative procedure known as reconciliation.
Coincidentally, two respected nonpartisan groups released reports this week that show why Biden and Pelosi should pause their aggressive agenda.
First, the Congressional Budget Office published a paper demonstrating what would happen if a sustained increase in federal spending were coupled with big tax increases to pay for the spending.
While the analysis points to different long-term effects from different types of taxes, any tax-and-spend approach would lead to reductions in economic growth and personal income that are larger than the size of the tax hikes.
For example, the analysis found that having 10% more federal government would mean a 12% to 19% reduction in personal consumption.
And that’s a conservative estimate. Most estimates show tax hikes shrink the economy by two to three times more than the revenues they raise.
That doesn’t mean Congress could escape the consequences of a continued spending spree by simply adding to the national debt. The CBO paper cautions that that would not only impose significant costs and divert resources away from the private sector, but it also would be unsustainable and increase the risk of a devastating financial crisis.
Along the same lines, the Government Accountability Office released a sobering reporton the nation’s poor financial health.
Now that Congress has passed a combined total of $6 trillion in legislation in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (more than $48,000 per household), it must quickly address the unsustainable growth of major benefit programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Even before the pandemic struck, these programs were on a path to bankruptcy. Addressing these shortfalls in a way that is fair to both current retirees and future generations who will have to foot the bill is one of the greatest policy challenges facing the nation.
Unfortunately, Washington is exacerbating the problem by adding excessively to the national debt and potentially stunting economic growth with higher taxes.
While the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it will only seek to raise taxes on the wealthy, a government of the size that it’s seeking would require amounts of money that can only be generated through steep across-the-board tax increases on middle-class Americans.
Regardless of whether those taxes are levied tomorrow or in a few years, they would be an inevitable part of expanding the size and scope of the federal government.
Rather than continuing down the path of centralized power and socialism, lawmakers should recognize the costs associated with endless federal spending and chart a course toward financial responsibility and prosperity.
If they don’t, it will be the public’s duty to hold them accountable.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we will consider publishing your remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature.
—
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
_______
Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
_____________
_________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
My response is easy. I care about results rather than rhetoric. And while GOP politicians often pay lip service to the principles of limited government,they usually increase spending even faster than Democrats.
This is bad news because it means the burden of government expands when Republicans are in charge.
And, as Gary Abernathy points out in a column for the Washington Post, Republicans then don’t have the moral authority to complain when Democrats engage in spending binges.
President Biden is proposing another $3 trillion in spending… There are objections, but none that can be taken seriously. …Republicans had lost their standing as the party of fiscal responsibility when most of them succumbed to the political virus of covid fever and rubber-stamped around $4 trillion in “covid relief,”… With Trump out and Biden in, Republicans suddenly pretended that their 2020 spending spree happened in some alternate universe.But the GOP’s united opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion package won’t wash off the stench of the hypocrisy. …I noted a year ago that we had crossed the Rubicon, that our longtime flirtation with socialism had become a permanent relationship. Congratulations, Bernie Sanders. The GOP won’t become irrelevant because of its association with Trump, as some predict. It will diminish because it is bizarrely opposing now that which it helped make palatable just last year. Fiscal responsibility is dead, and Republicans helped bury it. Put the shovels away, there’s no digging it up now.
For what it’s worth, I hope genuine fiscal responsibility isn’t dead.
Maybe it’s been hibernating ever since Reagan left office (like Pepperidge Farm, I’m old enough to remember those wonderful years).
Subsequent Republican presidents liked to copy Reagan’s rhetoric, but they definitely didn’t copy his policies.
Spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
Spending restraint also was hibernating during the presidency of George W. Bush.
And spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of Donald Trump.
I’m not the only one to notice GOP hypocrisy.
Here are some excerpts from a 2019 column in the Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria.
In what Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government — Trump has been profoundly unconservative. …Trump has now added more than $88 billion in taxes in the form of tariffs, according to the right-leaning Tax Foundation. (Despite what the president says, tariffs are taxes on foreign goods paid by U.S. consumers.) This has had the effect of reducing gross domestic product and denting the wages of Americans.…For decades, conservatives including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan preached to the world the virtues of free trade. But perhaps even more, they believed in the idea that governments should not pick winners and losers in the economy… Yet the Trump administration…behaved like a Central Planning Agency, granting exemptions on tariffs to favored companies and industries, while refusing them to others. …In true Soviet style, lobbyists, lawyers and corporate executives now line up to petition government officials for these treasured waivers, which are granted in an opaque process… On the core issue that used to define the GOP — economics — the party’s agenda today is state planning and crony capitalism.
Zakaria is right about Republicans going along with most of Trump’s bad policies (as illustrated by this cartoon strip).*
The bottom line is that Republicans would be much more effective arguing against Biden’s spending orgy had they also argued for spending restraint when Trump was in the White House.
If they make the wrong choice (anything other than Reaganism), Margaret Thatcher has already warned us about the consequences.
*To be fair, Republicans also went along with Trump’s good policies. It’s just unfortunate that spending restraint wasn’t one of them.
—-
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
_______
Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
_____________
_________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
The problem is much bigger than the humorous/irritating example discussed above.
In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Brad Polumbo shares some big-picture data on how politicians have squandered our money.
Whenever the government spends money, a significant portion is lost to bureaucracy, waste, and fraud. But the…unprecedented scope of federal spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic—an astounding $6 trillion total—has led to truly unthinkable levels of fraud. Indeed, a new report shows that the feds potentially lost $200 billion in unemployment fraud alone.…More than $200 billion of unemployment benefits distributed in the pandemic may have been pocketed by thieves… To put that $200 billion figure in context, it is equivalent to $1,400 lost to fraud per federal taxpayer. (There goes your stimmy check!) Or, comparing it to the $37 billion the federal government spent on vaccine and treatment development, it’s more than five times more lost to fraud than went to arguably the most crucial COVID initiative of all. That’s just scratching the surface. According to the American Enterprise Institute, “unemployment fraud” now ranks as the 4th biggest federal COVID expenditure out of more than 17 different categories.
If you’re a taxpayer, hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud sounds like a bad outcome.
But if you’re a Keynesian economist, it’s not a problem. All they care about is having the government borrow and spend a bunch of money. They think that making government biggerautomatically generates benefit for the economy, even if the money goes to thieves and crooks.
I’m not joking. This is why people like Paul Krugman said a fake attack by space aliens would be good for the economy because Washington would spend a bunch of money in response.
And it’s why Nancy Pelosi actually said the economy benefits if we subsidize joblessness.
Waiving PAYGO on $1.9T ‘Stimulus’ Is Reckless. There Are Better Ways to Go.
Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., seen here July 10, 2019, is calling for pretending that the deficit-financed spending spree for special interests in the $1.9 trillion so-called American Rescue Plan never occurred for PAYGO purposes. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” was passed under the guise of responding to COVID-19. In reality, less than 10% of the bill was for public health.
The massive “stimulus” package was stuffed with partisan special-interest payoffs for liberal priorities and other wasteful spending.
Significantly, the law will spend nearly $1.9 trillion without a plan to pay for it. That means that, unless Congress passes new laws with equal or greater reductions in spending by the end of the year, statutory pay-as-you-go (aka “PAYGO”) enforcement will kick in.
The basic premise of statutory PAYGO is straightforward. In the words of former President Barack Obama, who championed the policy and signed it into law, it tells Congress: “You can’t spend a dollar unless you cut a dollar elsewhere.”
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If, over the course of a year, laws are enacted that are projected to increase the deficit, statutory PAYGO requires that deficit increase to be paid for by automatic spending reductions (known as sequestration) over the next several years.
However, most spending accounts and programs are exempt from sequestration.
The law has fairly significant flaws, and it would be better to replace it with a more robust fiscal rule that more effectively restrains excessive spending. Politicians of both parties have abused loopholes, adding higher spending without paying for it.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that because of the large amount of spending in the stimulus law, statutory PAYGO would require a sequestration order to reduce spending by $381 billion next January.
That actually exceeds the total amount of the spending accounts that are subject to sequestration because most major programs are exempted or are capped.
Now that Democrats have enacted their $1.9 trillion spending binge, they do not want to pay for it.
Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., chairman of the House Budget Committee, has introduced a bill that would declare that the stimulus bill “shall not be counted” on the PAYGO scorecard. In effect, it would attempt to pretend that the deficit-financed spending spree for special interests never occurred.
The bill is pitched as a “legislative fix to avert sequestration.” It isn’t a “fix.” It is fiscal recklessness.
Yarmuth said, “If Republicans play political games and don’t do their jobs, Medicare and the seniors that depend on it will pay the price.”
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Not a single Republican voted for the stimulus. The limited reductions in Medicare spending as a result of the Democrats’ overspending would be enforced by the terms of Obama’s statutory PAYGO law and carried out by Biden’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Members of Congress who voted against the irresponsible $1.9 trillion spending bill should not feel pressured to excuse that fiscal recklessness by voting to waive statutory PAYGO enforcement. Simply waiving it retroactively would be just as irresponsible as the spending bill itself.
The potential of sequestration does, however, present an opportunity to implement much-needed fiscal responsibility in a more thoughtful way.
There are a number of smart policy alternatives to achieve spending reductions of equal or greater amounts of savings over time than would the blunt instrument of a sequestration order:
The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for a Responsible Post-COVID-19 Budget” and “Blueprint for Balance” both provide a menu of policy options to eliminate programs that do not carry out proper constitutional powers, and to cut waste and achieve better results for the taxpayers.
It’s vital that policymakers start to turn the tide against overspending. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, the federal budget was on an unsustainable path due to the growth of spending outpacing the growth of the economy.
The CBO’s “Long-Term Budget Outlook” showsthat even though tax revenues are projected to rise above normal historical levels, spending will continue to grow out of control.
The national debt has skyrocketed to $28 trillion, about $225,000 per American household. The public debt is already at its highest level relative to the national economy since World War II, but unlike the postwar period when spending fell back to more normal levels, spending and debt are projected to only continue rising.
The CBO says that the current fiscal trajectory would “reduce business investment and slow the growth of economic output,” and would “increase the risk of a fiscal crisis.” But more important are the negative consequences of government that grow too large and burdensome for families and communities.
When the federal government grows beyond its proper limits, and spends and taxes too much, it stifles prosperity, infringes on liberty, and makes it more difficult to live the American dream.
Given all that is at stake, pretending the $1.9 trillion spending bill never happened and retroactively waiving statutory PAYGO enforcement would be beyond irresponsible. However, Congress can and should take advantage of the opportunity to implement thoughtful fiscal responsibility.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we will consider publishing your remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature.
—
March 31, 2021
President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
Please explain to me if you ever do plan to balance the budget while you are President? I have written these things below about you and I really do think that you don’t want to cut spending in order to balance the budget. It seems you ever are daring the Congress to stop you from spending more.
“The credit of the United States ‘is not a bargaining chip,’ Obama said on 1-14-13. However, President Obama keeps getting our country’s credit rating downgraded as he raises the debt ceiling higher and higher!!!!
Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict
Just spend more, don’t know how to cut!!! Really!!! That is not living in the real world is it?
Making more dependent on government is not the way to go!!
Why is our government in over 16 trillion dollars in debt? There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is people say “Let’s spend someone else’s money to solve our problems.” Liberals like Max Brantley have talked this way for years. Brantley will say that conservatives are being harsh when they don’t want the government out encouraging people to be dependent on the government. The Obama adminstration has even promoted a plan for young people to follow like Julia the Moocher.
Imagine standing a baby carrot up next to the 25-story Stephens building in Little Rock. That gives you a picture of the impact on the national debt that federal spending in Arkansas on Medicaid expansion would have, while here at home expansion would give coverage to more than 200,000 of our neediest citizens, create jobs, and save money for the state.
Here’s the thing: while more than a billion dollars a year in federal spending would represent a big-time stimulus for Arkansas, it’s not even a drop in the bucket when it comes to the national debt.
Currently, the national debt is around $16.4 trillion. In fiscal year 2015, the federal government would spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion to fund Medicaid expansion in Arkansas if we say yes. That’s about 1/13,700th of the debt.
It’s hard to get a handle on numbers that big, so to put that in perspective, let’s get back to the baby carrot. Imagine that the height of the Stephens building (365 feet) is the $16 trillion national debt. That $1.2 billion would be the length of a ladybug. Of course, we’re not just talking about one year if we expand. Between now and 2021, the federal government projects to contribute around $10 billion. The federal debt is projected to be around $25 trillion by then, so we’re talking about 1/2,500th of the debt. Compared to the Stephens building? That’s a baby carrot.
______________
Here is how it will all end if everyone feels they should be allowed to have their “baby carrot.”
How sad it is that liberals just don’t get this reality.
While living in Europe in the 1760s, Franklin observed: “in different countries … the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee(15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and he noted, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
[Jefferson affirms that the main purpose of society is to enable human beings to keep the fruits of their labor.— TGW]
To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.” If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree; and the better, as this enforces a law of nature, while extra taxation violates it.
[From Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert E. Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 14:466.]
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Jefferson pointed out that to take from the rich and give to the poor through government is just wrong. Franklin knew the poor would have a better path upward without government welfare coming their way. Milton Friedman’s negative income tax is the best method for doing that and by taking away all welfare programs and letting them go to the churches for charity.
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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733
We got to act fast and get off this path of socialism. Morning Bell: Welfare Spending Shattering All-Time Highs Robert Rector and Amy Payne October 18, 2012 at 9:03 am It’s been a pretty big year for welfare—and a new report shows welfare is bigger than ever. The Obama Administration turned a giant spotlight […]
We need to cut Food Stamp program and not extend it. However, it seems that people tell the taxpayers back home they are going to Washington and cut government spending but once they get up there they just fall in line with everyone else that keeps spending our money. I am glad that at least […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ Liberals argue that the poor need more welfare programs, but I have always argued that these programs enslave the poor to the government. Food Stamps Growth […]
Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax Published on May 11, 2012 by LibertyPen In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr. ________________ Milton […]
Dan Mitchell Commenting on Obama’s Failure to Propose a Fiscal Plan Published on Aug 16, 2012 by danmitchellcato No description available. ___________ After the Welfare State Posted by David Boaz Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer, who is lecturing about freedom in Slovenia and Tbilisi this week, asked me to post this announcement of his […]
Is President Obama gutting the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed into law? Morning Bell: Obama Denies Gutting Welfare Reform Amy Payne August 8, 2012 at 9:15 am The Obama Administration came out swinging against its critics on welfare reform yesterday, with Press Secretary Jay Carney saying the charge that the Administration gutted the successful […]
Thomas Sowell – Welfare Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. The Continuing Good News About Welfare Reform By Robert Rector and Patrick Fagan, Ph.D. February 6, 2003 Six years ago, President Bill Clinton signed legislation overhauling part of the nation’s welfare system. […]
Uploaded by ForaTv on May 29, 2009 Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/18/James_Bartholomew_The_Welfare_State_Were_In Author James Bartholomew argues that welfare benefits actually increase government handouts by ‘ruining’ ambition. He compares welfare to a humane mousetrap. —– Welfare reform was working so good. Why did we have to abandon it? Look at this article from 2003. In the controversial […]
Thomas Sowell If the welfare reform law was successful then why change it? Wasn’t Bill Clinton the president that signed into law? Obama Guts Welfare Reform Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley July 12, 2012 at 4:10 pm Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare […]
I have been writing President Obama letters and have not received a personal response yet. (He reads 10 letters a day personally and responds to each of them.) However, I did receive a form letter in the form of an email on July 10, 2012. I don’t know which letter of mine generated this response so I have […]
The current debate about extending unemployment benefits is remarkable, though (at least from an economic perspective), because certain politicians want to give people money on the condition that they don’t get a job. Needless to say, that leads to a very perverse incentive structure.
And we definitely can’t overlook this superb Wizard-of-Id parody. It doesn’t focus specifically on unemployment benefits, but it makes a great point about labor supply incentives.
Well, as illustrated by this chart, they both presided over periods with impressive job creation.
Indeed, the evidence is very strong that the overall burden of government fell during his tenure.
