In “Cost of $10 Billion Stimulus Easier to Tally Than New Jobs” in the Wall Street Journal, Ianthe Jeanne Dugan and Justin Scheck report that the mega-billions in corporate-welfare subsidies to solar, wind, geothermal and other “green” businesses (under section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) have resulted in far…
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The Independent Institute’s Senior Fellow Robert Higgs has been taking on the so-called conventional wisdom that the U.S. economy continues to be in recessionary or near-recessionary conditions because “consumers are not spending”. On Friday, Dr. Higgs issued a challenge to readers of the Independent Institute’s blog The Beacon, as well as commentators and pundits,…
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With the White House and the House of Representatives still at loggerheads over how to resolve the debt crisis, administration officials are turning up the heat, claiming that Washington has only two choices: increase the government�s borrowing capacity beyond the current $14.3 trillion limit or face a catastrophic U.S. Treasury default. If the latter…
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Dennis Cauchon in USA Today reports that: Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation’s history, a USA Today analysis of federal data finds. The trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly 2 years old. A record 18.3% of the…
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In “Is the U.S. Becoming a Welfare State?”, Daniel Indiviglio reports in The Atlantic that U.S. government entitlement programs now account for a whopping 35% of wages, up from 26% in 2008. Uncle Sam has been aggressively increasing Americans’ allowance recently. Government entitlement programs have grown to account for 35% of wages, according to…
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In his recent article in Investor’s Business Daily, “Uncertainty Continues To Depress Jobs,” Robert Higgs (Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute) discusses how the U.S. government’s interventionist and spending policies are prolonging high unemployment by creating a climate of massive economic uncertainty: President Obama, in his State of the Union address, promised to focus on…
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In the Wall Street Journal, Jeff Bater reports in “U.S. Posts $150.4 Billion November Budget Deficit,” that federal red ink is reaching an all-time record: The U.S. government ran its 26th straight monthly budget deficit in November amid wrangling over a package that would extend big tax cuts to Americans trying to recover from…
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In a new article in the Wall Street Journal, “Why the Spending Stimulus Failed: New economic research shows why lower tax rates do far more to spur growth,” Stanford University economist Michael Boskin examines how and why the U.S.’s $814 billion economic stimulus has failed. For many years now, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert…
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We are entering an era of high inflation, to judge by the massive growth of the money supply in the United States, Europe and Asia, and the stubbornness of central bankers who insist that high unemployment demands the creation of even more money. The last time the world went through a similar period was…
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Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs examines the serious problem of “regime uncertainty” being created by the feasting of federal spending programs starving (crowding out) the private investment needed for recovery from the recession: “Private saving and investment are the heart and soul of the dynamic market process. Together they provide and allocate the…
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