There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.Cato lists many, many economists who disagree. See the whole advertisement here (including 8 signatures from GMU professors).
Starting Stata from the DockSome of you are still looking for the joke, Some of you assumed I made a typo. Two of you are laughing. And I know which two...
You may wish to keep Stata in your Dock so that you can start it quickly. While Stata is still running, drag the Stata icon shown in the Dock either to a new position on the Dock or simply up and down again. After you quit Stata, its icon will remain in the Dock and can be double clicked to start the application.
If you have many Stata projects in different folders, and you made differently named blank do-files for each folder, you can drag these to the Dock to start your work on each project. You could also add commonly used Stata data files to the Dock. There are many such shortcuts you could use. Pick your poisson.
Pareto efficiency: you still have to learn it. But if you are interested in doing policy analysis, it's basically useless.
nerdrevenge Says:Personal favorite:
December 1st, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I was a fan of this website before this idea showed up and now I am an even bigger fan. who comes up with this stuff and why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? This seems like something that someone should know about
policywonk Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:46 am
This is why I alwyas check this site every week, because of stuff like this — We need to do this right away! Why didn’t they do this the first time? [...]
philr Says:
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
this is a GREAT idea. how do we get it “out there” so that it gets noticed other than by people like me who pore through policy blogs? You should have a links so that people can automatically forward these things to their congressperson
jimcalhoun Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
the problem is that there is no way of getting the right people to listen. Anybody who reads this is going to say, duh, we should do this. BUt who is reading it? I see a lot of what looks like students and policy wonks but no one who can make it happen
bceconomist Says:Fortunately, someone eventually spoke up.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
anyone see the Globe today? Ed Glaeser was lamenting that no one had come up with an idea to get people to spend their stimulus checks. Those Harvard people have to read this website before they mouth off in the paper. You don’t see us making that mistake.
Will Says:/self-love
January 21st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
You have overlooked an important fact: MONEY IS FUNGIBLE. (Go look that word up, kids.)
So while soccer moms buy groceries on their stimulus cards, they reduce spending from other sources of income. The net effect of the stimulus card is probably comparable to a stimulus check. At best, you’ve made it minutely more difficult to save the additional income provided by the stimulus.
I wrote that as a kind of Beach Boys parody. And 'Back in the USA' was a Chuck Berry song, so it kinda took off from there. I just liked the idea of Georgia girls and talking about places like the Ukraine as if they were California, you know? It was also hands across the water, which I'm still conscious of. 'Cuz they like us out there, even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not. The kids do. And that to me is very important for the future of the race.Even though the bosses in the Kremlin may not.
[...] prices double every day and more than 2,000 people have died in a cholera epidemic.Longtime readers of this blog know how the mess that is Zimbabwe breaks my heart. For new readers, I spent 4.5 months in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007 where I met many Zimbabweans and participated in a couple protests/informational meetings with respect to the country.
But the tax provision likely to be of most interest is the two-year middle-class tax cut, which will provide up to $500 to individuals and up to $1,000 for couples earning less than $200,000 a year, the overwhelming majority of Americans.Let's ignore normative questions surrounding the government's role in stimulating the economy and, instead, focus on the economic case: will temporary tax cuts boost aggregate demand?
Δ Current Consumption = Δ Income/nAssuming the average recipient is 45 years old and expects to live until they are 78, n = 33. A temporary tax cut of $275 billion increases aggregate current consumption by $275b/33 = $8.33 billion. Of course, if you are anything like me, the word billion after any number reduces the entire value to "a lot". To clarify: a tax cut of $500 per person for two years would boost current consumption by $(500+500)/33 = $30.30 per person. I've had bigger bar tabs.
where Δ represents "change in" and n is the remaining number of years one expects to live.
Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead, I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure — that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.Dream of our founders? What dreams would that be?
"The recession might force the cream of the crop to rise to the top. There's some people who believe that a cleaning out of the market might be a good thing for the industry," Comella said. "2009 might not be all that bad, but it's going to bring the issue of quality to the foreground."I should point out that she is referring to the porn industry. (I stumbled across this little gem when checking up on the potential porn bailout. BTW: no news, as of yet.)
It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.IMHO, Kristof's observations are spot on.
The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound.
Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.He even provides testimonials.
“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”But this is by far his best line.
I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty.ATSRTWT.
(Scribbled on a post-it attached to a paper entitled "Formalism in Austrian-School Welfare Economics: Another Pretense of Knowledge?")This could be the best Tullock insult discovered as of yet.
Gordon-
Am I crazy, or are these other Austrians crazy?
Yours-
Dave Prychitko
(Typed on official University of Arizona letterhead and dated August 1, 1995.)
David Prychitko
Department of Economics
State University of New York
Oswego, New York 13126
Dear Dave:
All Austrians are crazy.
Cordially yours,
Gordon Tullock
Karl Eller Professor of
Economics and Political Science
GT : lc
“A stimulus package of this magnitude is likely to contain many projects that are poor investments.”
‐ Alan Viard,
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
“Government spending does not create incentives for labor, innovation and investment. Instead of
spending $1 trillion in Washington, let Washington forgive $1 trillion in tax revenues to create incentives for
millions of individuals and firms to get the economy going again, one dollar at a time.”
‐ Donald Luskin
Chief Investment Officer, Trend Macrolytics LLC
“I have concerns about a stimulus spending bill. I think there are two criteria that may justify additional
spending: 1. The spending passes a long-term cost-benefit test. That test may be less rigorous now that
we are in a period of extremely low interest rates, but it should still be passed. 2. Alternatively, the
spending can be implemented very quickly and will have a significant impact on employment. I highly
doubt there are $1 trillion of new projects that meet one or both of these tests. I would rather see a
temporary suspension of some or all of the payroll tax.”
‐ Philip Levy
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
“The only way Congress can spend money is to extract it from the private sector – either by taxing it,
borrowing it, or seignorage. The question then becomes: will Congress spend that money more wisely than
the private sector would have spent it? The answer appears to be no. Congress typically spends
according to its political priorities, not economic priorities.”
‐ Michael Cannon
Cato Institute
“It is time for voters to wake up to the fact that government cannot create jobs. It can only shift jobs from
one part of the economy to the other. It is entrepreneurs who create jobs, and it is consumers who judge
whether those jobs are the best jobs to be created. The government contributes best by establishing a rule
of law and protection of property rights that allows entrepreneurs and consumers to act in their best
interests.”
‐ Antony Davies
Associate Professor of Economics, Duquesne University
“The stimulus plan will most probably turn quickly into pork spending. Marginal rate tax cuts would be a
much more effective way to stimulate demand along with cuts in the capital gains and corporate tax rates.
Evidence shows that marginal tax cut multipliers are much higher than spending multipliers. In addition the
Fed is still not out of ammunition.”
‐ Joseph Zoric
Associate Professor of Economics, Franciscan University of Steubenville
“Fiscal stimulus may have symbolic value and certainly does provide an expedient for distributive politics,
but there is NO evidence that it contributes to GDP or economic growth more broadly.”
‐ Edward Lopez
Associate Professor of Law and Economics, San Jose State University
“The empirical evidence overwhelmingly rejects federal government deficit spending as the best method for
stimulating the economy, and is generally unsupportive of it having any stimulus effect at all.”
‐ Justin Ross
Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana
University
“There is not only the problem that efficient projects are often slow to get to the point where they generate
actual expenditures, but also that once the government starts spending it is hard to turn off the tap when
the stimulus is no longer needed.”
‐ Thomas Mayer
Professor Emeritus, University of California –Davis
“The stimulus plans assume consumption is the source of economic growth. It is not. It is the
consequence of said growth. The ‘stimulus’ is a redistribution of spending, at best, and will do little to help.
The next Administration should avoid large scale programs and experimentation and allow the marketplace
to correct the errors made by the last 8 years of misguided intervention.”
‐ Steven Horwitz
Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University
“Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing
private spending equivalently. Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by
borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending.
Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace
it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other
people's money.”
‐ Richard Wagner
Professor of Economics, George Mason University
“Want to grow the economy without inflation? Cut marginal tax rates, slash the corporate rate, expense
investment in the first year (instead of depreciation), keep tax rates low on dividends and capital gains, and
repeal the death tax. Have the Federal Reserve focus on price stability and a sound dollar, and on not
generating a monetary roller coaster. (That, in part, is what caused the housing and commodities bubbles.)
Rein in government spending to pay for the tax cuts, and trim senseless regulation.”
‐ Stephen Entin
President & Executive Director, Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation
“Rather than old style Keynesianism we should reduce the corporate income tax substantially. The
problem is not lack of demand, but rather a lack of investment. By reducing the corporate income tax,
among the highest in the industrialized world, we will increase the incentive for companies to invest in new
equipment, technology, research and development, and buildings. This will increase productivity in the
long run, leading to higher GDP and higher wages.”
‐ Gary Wolfram
William Simon Professor of Economics, Hillsdale College
“Government ‘infrastructure spending stimulus’ programs in Japan during the 1990s produced no stimulus,
but rather a vast overhang of government debt. Bridges, tunnels, roads, and trains to nowhere stimulate
nothing. It is productivity growth that counts, and that comes mainly from the private sector – which is why
tax cuts have always been a surer way to economic recovery.”
‐ Lawrence Franko
Retired Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Management
“There is no convincing evidence that stimulative fiscal policy is either feasible or effective. The recognition
and action lags (ancient terms from the bygone Keynesian era) alone virtually always mean that the
stimulus arrives after the recession is over, thus causing an undesirable distortion that impedes recovery.”
‐ John Seater
Professor of Economics, North Carolina State University
“The evidence that fiscal stimulus works is weak. Why risk such large amounts on a program with
uncertain benefits, especially if the mechanisms to transmit those benefits to the economy are a bunch of
pork barrel, second rate projects.”
‐ Charles Reback
Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina Upstate
“Japan in the early and mid 1990s engaged in major fiscal stimulus focused on infrastructure projects with
deficits equal to 7-8% of GDP and a cumulative Debt/GDP of almost 150%. None of this led to economic
recovery until the late 1990s when the Bank of Japan engaged in quantitative easing of monetary policy
and the Government of Japan finally introduced a taxpayer bailout of the banks. The Fed and Treasury in
the US have already taken such actions. The Japanese experience suggests that additional fiscal stimulus
will only add to the Debt without helping the economy.”
‐ Michael Keran
Retired, Former Sr. VP & Director of Research, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
“Government intervention and ‘stimulus’ in the housing market is largely responsible for the current
economic crisis. History has shown that the Obama team’s proposed ‘stimulus’ is not only going to have
little to no effect in the short run, but will create a larger bureaucratic structure, lead to tremendous
investments in unproductive political lobbying among ‘stimulus project’ wannabes, and dissuade/delay
private investment, recovery and growth.”
‐ Michael Sykuta
Associate Professor, University of Missouri – Columbia
“Common sense dictates that any investment, public or private, must take opportunity costs into
consideration. It’s never a good idea to waste scare resources, but this is often what occurs when
economics gets pushed aside in favor of politics.”
‐ James Garven
Frank S. Groner Memorial Chair of Finance, Baylor University
“Our economy as a whole will [no] benefit from taking money from current or future taxpayers to support a
government spending spree. No doubt, certain interest groups will gain from feeding at the public sector
trough. But losers surely will outnumber winners by a large margin. Our economy as a whole will benefit
from Congress lowering taxes and letting Americans decide for themselves what is worth spending their
hard-earned dollars on.”
‐ David Laband
Professor of Economics and Policy, Auburn University
“A government-spending ‘stimulus’ is a very bad idea. Because government can spend only what it has
taxed or borrowed away from the public, it creates no new demand but merely redirects it. Recovery
depends on profit and loss discipline and public confidence that the basic rules underlying free markets will
be followed. The latter is hurt by government interventions such as ‘stimulus.’”
‐ Howard Baetjer
Lecturer, Dept. of Economics, Towson University
“[T]ax cuts will not create the waste [than] government spending would, because individual households are
making their own decisions about which spending or investment projects are worthwhile for themselves.”
‐ Alan Stockman
Wilson Professor of Economics, University of Rochester
“During recessions, unemployment rationalizes a role for government in creating jobs. But there is no
reason these jobs should be directly working for the government: nothing about a recession justifies larger
government. If we are worried about too few jobs, it makes sense to subsidize private employment (for
example, by temporarily lowering payroll taxes or creating a new tax subsidy for new hires).”
‐ Glen Weyl
Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows and Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of
Economics, Harvard University
“Tax cuts are preferable to spending, especially the many programs that will doubtless result from this
process. Even the designated chair of Obama's CEA finds that increased taxes reduce growth.”
‐ James Butkiewicz
Professor of Economics, University of Delaware
“The current recession was caused by government fiddling with the mortgage market and the moral hazard
created by the illusion of government monitoring of financial markets. Increased government involvement
in the economy is not the solution.”
‐ Henry Thompson
Professor, Auburn University
“An ‘economic stimulus’ program will do nothing to correct the serious price and resource misallocations
that currently exist and are stopping the economy from moving back toward ‘full-employment.’ In fact, they
will likely retard the recovery. They will divert resources from the private sector to the government sector
moving us further away from a free-enterprise economy.”
‐ Gene Smiley
Emeritus Professor of Economics, Marquette University
“There is ample evidence that large deficit spending packages will be counter-productive. We should focus
on tax cuts and on spending proposals where the benefits outweigh the costs. Transferring funds to state
governments avoids asking the cost-benefit question and should be avoided.”
‐ King Banaian
Professor, Dept. of Economics, St. Cloud State University
“Government spending is not the road to real economic prosperity. I am particularly concerned about
government spending misdirecting opportunities for entrepreneurship and private economic growth.”
‐ Henry Butler
Executive Director, Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth
Northwestern University School of Law
“Governments make lots of a bad policy during times of economic stress. A spending package that
approaches $1 trillion is a case in point. Do we really trust the Congress and the Executive Branch to
spend such vast sums wisely, especially after all the bumbling around and ill-advised bailouts this year?
Does the government really have a long list of well-thought-out, cost-effective projects that will help our
economy? I do not think so.”
‐ Scott Bradford
Associate Professor, Brigham Young University
“A spending stimulus will only delay the needed restructuring of the U.S. economy to remain internationally
competitive. Tax cuts will facilitate that restructuring far better than spending and job creation by the
government.”
‐ Stacie Beck
Professor, University of Delaware
“There is no credible evidence that government spending can create jobs in the long run. Government
policies can, however, destroy jobs.”
‐ John Howe
Professor of Finance, University of Missouri
“Japan’s federal expenditures, following their 1989 stock market crash, have had little to no effect on their
recovery. Japan has been left with a huge government debt per GDP ratio and nearly 20 years of little to
no growth. Why on earth would the U.S. want to follow in Japan’s footsteps?”
‐ Gary Quinlivan
Dean of the Alex G. McKenna School, St. Vincent College
“We must first recognize that government officials must be seen as doing something to fix the economy;
however, the plans I have been hearing about, namely developing infrastructure for heretofore impractical
‘green’ technologies, strikes me as an odd approach. Markets still work pretty well and most economists
will tell you that government interference with those markets typically causes more harm than good…
Entrepreneurs will create a much more efficient outcome if the costs imposed upon them by government
are reduced.”
‐ Brian O’Roark
Associate Professor of Economics, Robert Morris University
“Government spending programs like these are political grab-bags whose successes are predicated on
satisfying political interest groups, not on creating value and growth in a market economy; these
government spending programs then often become embedded ‘entitlements,’ crowding out the flow of
funds to private investments in a free marketplace.”
‐ Douglas Houston
Professor, School of Business, University of Kansas
If [the big three's] fears come true, gas prices will be so low when they start rolling out the cars next year that people won’t buy them and all the high-priced research will have gone to waste.And the solution, as usual, is more government. Hold on to your wallet.
The fear of producing the wrong cars has created a whisper campaign, with industry officials saying they may approach the incoming Obama administration about raising the federal gasoline tax or setting up a system that keeps the price of oil above a certain level.If nothing else, this serves as solid proof that pro-business and pro-market are not synonymous.
“It makes life very difficult if the market gyrates wildly over the course of several months, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen,” Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.You cannot make this up. But they do have a point: Why should the government be picking and choosing economic winners and losers?
“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”
Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry's survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people."
If we consider only two choices, both of which exclude the possibility of market provisions—total chaos where life is nasty, brutish, and short, or total harmony in the absence of conflict—we easily reach the conclusion that a compulsive state is needed as an effective enforcement mechanism. The former choice is dismissed on the grounds of continued violence and conflict, and the latter is rejected because a conflict-free society is impossible to imagine. Once the possibility of the market provision of rules, laws, and enforcement mechanisms is admitted, however, the conclusion that the state is the necessary and only source of order is exposed as a misconception.
Economics is now defined neither by its subject matter nor by its method.Is this a pro or con?
What, then, unites these eight young stars and the discipline they may come to dominate? Economists still share a taste for the Greek alphabet: they like to provide formal, algebraic accounts of the behaviour they explain. And they pride themselves on the sophistication of their investigative methods. They are usually better at teasing confessions out of data than their rivals in other social sciences. What defines economics? Economics is what economists do—the best of them, anyway.
You have proven that Wikipedia matters to you, and that you support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising. You've helped make and keep Wikipedia available for the whole world.I find it interesting that he still calls it free knowledge just after acknowledging that
Since July 1, more than 125,000 of you have donated $4 million. In addition, we've received major gifts and foundation support totaling $2 million. This combined revenue will cover our operating expenses for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2009.C'mon Jimmy. Wikipedia is not free! And that is ok.
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