For Wedgie

[H8tank]

"There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy."

 

— PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA, JANUARY 9 , 2009

With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true.

 

 

200 Economists

[AtomicCEO]

Nobody from GVU is on that list.

 

If it was from 200 web designers, one of them would have figured out how to title the page.

[isleseeya]

If it was from 200 web designers, one of them would have figured out how to title the page.

 

[Puddy]

It took 200 economists to come up with one paragraph.

[Ursa Majoris]

Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

 

This is it? This is their cure? One sentence?

[westvirginia]

Why Government Spending does not Equal Economic Growth

 

A couple excerpts:

 

This is not the first time government expansions have failed to produce economic growth. Massive spending hikes in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s all failed to increase economic growth rates. Yet in the 1980s and 1990s—when the federal government shrank by one-fifth as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP)—the U.S. economy enjoyed its great­est expansion to date.

 

also:

Spending-stimulus advocates claim that govern­ment can "inject" new money into the economy, increasing demand and therefore production. This raises the obvious question: Where does the gov­ernment acquire the money it pumps into the econ­omy? Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed: Therefore, every dollar Congress "injects" into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistrib­uted from one group of people to another.

 

and finally:

Mountains of academic studies show how gov­ernment expansions reduce economic growth:[4]

 

1. Public Finance Review reported that "higher total government expenditure, no matter how financed, is associated with a lower growth rate of real per capita gross state product."[5]

 

2. The Quarterly Journal of Economics reported that "the ratio of real government consumption expenditure to real GDP had a negative associa­tion with growth and investment," and "growth is inversely related to the share of government consumption in GDP, but insignificantly related to the share of public investment."[6]

 

3. A Journal of Macroeconomics study discovered that "the coefficient of the additive terms of the government-size variable indicates that a 1% increase in government size decreases the rate of economic growth by 0.143%."[7]

 

4. Public Choice reported that "a one percent in­crease in government spending as a percent of GDP (from, say, 30 to 31%) would raise the un­employment rate by approximately .36 of one percent (from, say, 8 to 8.36 percent)."[8]

[wiegie]

I got an e-mail asking me to sign this petition... I did not.

[Brewer]

I got an e-mail asking me to sign this petition... I did not.

Do you know how many economists received this e-mail?

[wiegie]

Do you know how many economists received this e-mail?

I can tell you this, if I got it, they sure weren't very selective about who they sent it to.