As you may recall, the United States implemented a huge package of stimulus – about $787 billion worth – in 2008, President Obama’s first year in office. Included in that package was a fair amount of temporary tax cut measures, increased funding for programs like unemployment and food stamps, and a large list of spending on various projects identified as “Good Investments”. This is relevant for two reasons. First, President Obama proposed in a recent speech $447 billion in new spending along similar lines to the original stimulus (do the math, that will be $1.2 trillion in ‘stimulus’, not including the plethora of other stimulus programs like Cash for Clunkers) . Second, it is relevant because the Congressional Budget Office recently declared the original stimulus a success based upon the models which were used to propose the stimulus.
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for September, 2011
A Nod to Irony
On September - 7 - 2011
My ironic suggestion for cognitive dissonance in two New York Times articles was hosted in yesterday’s Best of the Web Today (print edition today) – a daily column on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Page.
Read the rest of this entry »Back in Action
On September - 1 - 2011
New articles will start to come in the very near future. Where have I been? Getting married.
If you’re keeping score at home, I bought a house and got married in the last three months. I’ll leave it as an exercise for our readers to see if the subject or tone of my articles changes with my new circumstances!
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