By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
A recently-published U.S. study has examined a variety of options for an economic stimulus program and its findings are highly illuminating.
In effect, whom the money goes to has a very significant effect on the economic impact of the stimulus measure that is implemented.
And the economic impact of the various possible measures produces results that tend to rise exponentially in inverse proportion to the income levels of the recipients.
The study found that every dollar the government spends on Food Stamps produces $1.73 in economic activity.
Every dollar spent on Unemployment Insurance produces $1.64 in economic activity.
And every dollar spent on infrastructure generates $1.59 in economic activity.
At the other end of the spectrum, every dollar spent on tax cuts for the wealthy produces just 37 cents in economic activity. read more »
Daily Archives: August 20, 2011
Which kind of economic stimulus works?
And they call THIS “The Fair Tax”!?
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Every time I start to think I have just heard the most bizarre and insane utterance a Republican Tea Party idiot can possibly come up with, another of their number comes up with something even more absurd.
I was watching the RT cable news channel yesterday when former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, one of a zillion zany pretenders after the Republican Tea Party presidential nomination in 2012, appeared in a live interview.
Johnson explained that his domestic platform consisted of just two planks:
First, cutting all federal government spending – right across the board, including Social Security benefits and Medicare – by an immediate 43 percent;
Second, eliminating all existing federal taxes and replacing them with a single new tax – the so-called “Fair Tax” that a lot of right-wing wingnuts have been proposing for more than a decade. read more »
FM Flaherty fudges the economic facts
By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney were both traipsed before a House of Commons committee this week in a bid to cheer up Canadians about the state of the economy.
Both dutifully recited a litany of trivial details that suggested that, relatively speaking, Canada’s economy is not in such terrible shape.
On the surface, that analysis may have some merit but for the millions of Canadians who have yet to recover at all from the 2008 recession, it was cold comfort.
Carney blithely expressed the unwarranted view that neither the United States nor the European Union were headed for a recession in the short term and insisted that if worse comes to worst the Bank of Canada could respond.
Flaherty insisted that the Canadian economy was doing fairly well and that his government has no intention of injecting any new financial stimulus into the economy.
The views of both men reflect the neanderthal, netherworld nostrums of the pampered and totally-out-of-touch socioeconomic elite. read more »
