Three economists from MIT and Tex A&M have crunched the numbers and discovered that Obama’s Cash-for-Clunkers scheme back in 2009 was a failure even by Keynesian standards. Why? Because consumption doesn’t drive growth, it’s a consequence of growth.
Post-war growth was coincident with policies of government control but they were not the cause of the growth. For starters, catch-up economic growth is easier than trying to work out what to do at the technological cutting edge.
After the end of Apartheid in 1994, nobody would have guessed that South Africa would be making many of the same mistakes as the Apartheid regime only two decades later, from censoring speech to violating agricultural property rights. In our process of transformation, we were supposed to move away from the Apartheid mentality.
When it comes to the oil sector (as in others), additional government interventions only cause unintended consequences. Using the threat of Strategic Petroleum Reserve withdrawals to limit “price gouging” and “profiteering” only cripples the ability of the market to anticipate and mitigate supply disruptions.
Remarkably, Bernstein describes the ideas presented as "bold" and "progressive," but in truth, they're the same lame-brained policies of redistribution that the left have been promoting for decades. And as they're anti-capital formation by Bernstein's very own admission, they're also inimical to the very prosperity that has long made the U.S. the country where poverty is cured. To be clear, if this is the best the Democrats have, they'll long remain in the minority.
Spending for food stamps has almost quadrupled over the last two decades and the health outcomes for recipients have been terrible. There are hungry children and adults in this nation but carpet-bombing people with subsidized calories causes collateral damage.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics employs 2,500 people at a cost of $640 million annually to produce its monthly unemployment report. Each month, meanwhile, the private company ADP releases one or two days ahead of the BLS's that nearly mimics the BLS's, all at no expense to the taxpayer. There is a market demand for reliable employment data, and the market is providing it.
These nations expect the United States to weaken its economy based on an unproven, but rather expensive theory about the effects of climate change. But when it comes to living up to a longstanding agreement among NATO members to share the costs of a mutual defense shield, they'll let the US foot the bill.
CBO does not disclose its methods for scoring bills to the public, leaving policy makers and legislators at the mercy of their timing and expertise.
Give it a few hundred years and I wouldn’t be surprised if archaeologists and historians treat the crumbled remains of Alaska's bridge to nowhere, Boston's Big Dig, or Flint Michigan's Auto World as brilliant and important stepping stones for humanity.
