‘Would John Maynard Keynes himself even agree with all this perpetual deficit-spending that has been going on for the past 40 years in America?’ After all, it was his revolutionary economic ideas that America turned to in the 1930’s to try to get out of the Great Depression. Since his signature masterpiece, ‘The General Theory […]
On this Labor Day weekend, is there anything government can really do to “create” new jobs? “Go on a 4-year recess!” many people are saying right about now. At least that would be a four-year period that business people could make plans and know for sure that nothing would change, so they could make money […]
Americans love the short, quick solution. (Except when it involves them, that is) We have one possible solution that would take about six words to write in a piece of legislation. It would be one simple answer to our enormous budget deficits that has never been offered, considered or asked to be scored by the […]
You know, sometimes the best answer is also the simplest answer. William of Ockham (Occam) was a 14th century English philosopher who came up with the ‘crazy’ notion that perhaps the simplest answer is the best one and it became known, oddly enough, as ‘Occam’s Razor’. Same with the idea that perhaps the United States […]
One thing we do know about economics and the effects on the federal budget: ‘If people ain’t working, they ain’t paying taxes! Income, corporate, payroll, excise, capital gains…nothing, nada, zippo!’ Any convoluted scheme to raise taxes on this group or another is doomed to abysmal failure if people are not able to find a job […]
If Karl Marx was writing today, he might amend his famous comment about religion and conclude that the true opiates of the American people are tax cuts, more spending and more debt. We have been struck time and time again by the fact that the American voting public, on both ends of the political spectrum, […]
“But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years?” – Thomas Jefferson, […]
Here’s what happened the last time there was a Social Security ‘crisis’ in 1983, when incoming payroll tax receipts were just about to go below the amount of expected benefit payments going out: * Alan Greenspan was appointed to chair an august national commission to ‘Save Social Security!’. * Your payroll taxes went up. Way […]
What do the American financial ‘panics’ of 1785; 1792; 1819; 1837; 1857; 1873; 1893; 1907 and 1929 have in common with the one we are still dealing with today? They all eventually ‘went away’. Didn’t they? We are still here, aren’t we? We have had some real humdingers of financial panics throughout our history, […]
It seems like it is never going to end, doesn’t it? It is getting to be ‘Kind of a Drag’, as the Buckinghams used to sing. There are lots of reasons why this recession is taking so long to break out of. We happen to think that the Obama White House and Congress have played […]
