A rapid collapse in the Wisconsin fiscal prospects (but pretty predictable, as long as one doesn’t believe in supply side miracles).
Category Archives: budget
New Classical Kansas?
Two years ago, Governor Brownback asserted:
Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.
Whistling Past the Intellectual Graveyard
The Extreme Supply-Sider one in Topeka, that is. Josh Barro notes how tax cuts failed to result in entrepreneurial renaissance that would result in revenue increases; Wonkblog further observes (I did before) that employment growth has collapsed utterly and completely. Paul Krugman has dissected the social dynamics underpinning the adherence to patently unsupported ideas, but it is always useful to reiterate the facts of the case.
The Ryan Plan: Assume a Can Opener, Yet Again
(The can opener reference can be understood by clicking here)
The budget proposed by Representative Ryan touts the pro-growth impacts of deficit reduction ($5.1 trillion over ten years, according to Table S-2). It is instructive to actually read the documents that Representative Ryan’s budget cites (as it has in the past — read about the Heritage CDA previous assessments [1] [2], as well as Representative Ryan’s previous attempt to use CBO documents to lend a patina of respectability to his projections).
Addressing growing student debt
Mortgage and credit card debt today are lower than they were before the Great Recession. But the dollar value of outstanding student loans has surged, growing from 4% of GDP in 2007 to over 7% today.
Guest Contribution: “The Obama Stimulus and the 5-Year Anniversary of Market Turnaround”
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, and former Member of the Council of Economic Advisers, 1997-99. He is currently a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee.
CBO deficit projections
The U.S. federal deficit fell from around $1.1 trillion for fiscal year 2012 to under $700 billion for 2013, and is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be below $500 B by 2015. Although it sounds like continuing improvement, the CBO’s projected path is actually unsustainable. Here’s why.
Observations on the GDP Release and the CBO Outlook
The output gap remains large, even as the external sector supports growth; this outcome is partly due to excessively rapid fiscal consolidation
The Ever-Expanding Government Meme Lives On
I happened to catch Americans for Prosperity‘s Tim Phillips talking about the ever growing government [1], in the context of the recent budget deal. Here’s what the actual data indicate:
Fiscal Drag in 2013
From Torsten Slok at Deutsche Bank:
[F]iscal drag in 2013 is 2.4%, ie if GDP growth in 2013 ends up being 1.7% then if we had not had the fiscal drag then GDP growth would instead have been 4.1% (=1.7% + 2.4%). ..