The founder of the Slovakian group “Against Violence" just shot the country’s prime minister.
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Markets everywhere emerge in an unplanned, spontaneous way, adapting to local traditions and circumstances, and not through reforms designed by outsiders. The free market depends on the bottom-up emergence of complex institutions and social norms that are difficult for outsiders to understand, much less change.--Easterly
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Judge Merchan made nominal contributions to the 2020 United States presidential election, donating $15 to Joe Biden's campaign, $10 to the "Progressive Turnout Project," and $10 to "Stop Republicans." What does that mean? Why would he make such small contributions at all?
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Stop or be Stopped
America is on what Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell calls “an unsustainable fiscal path.” 'Unsustainable' means 'stop or be stopped.'
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Stop or be Stopped
America is on what Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell calls “an unsustainable fiscal path.” 'Unsustainable' means 'stop or be stopped.'
Well into the business cycle, we are pumping fiscal stimulus equal to an unprecedented 6% of GDP and a quarter of all government spending into the economy, with no end in sight. Federal debt has risen from 70% of GDP after the financial crisis to nearly 100% today, following $5 trillion of pandemic spending to close what was likely a $1 trillion shortfall.
Tax revenues as a share of GDP are projected to remain above their 50-year average, but spending has grown to a historically high 23% of GDP from 19% before the financial crisis. Only half that increase is driven by retiring baby boomers, whose growth is expected to increase spending by another 2% of GDP over 10 years. And, importantly, government spending does not seem to be subject to reflection or analysis.
A political resolution doesn’t seem likely. Retirees seem intent on keeping what was promised them and avoiding benefit cuts. Policymakers are unlikely to raise middle-class taxes—they are engineering cuts by expanding the child tax credit. Heavy tax increases on the highest earners are estimated to contribute less than 2% of GDP.
The only answer here is economic growth--serious growth in a pro-growth economic and political atmosphere--and restrained spending, qualities absent in most political toolkits. And such policies are impossible among those hoarders of outmoded, confiscatory, redistributing (and hostile) weak-minded philosophies periodically exhumed from ancient European graveyards.
Tax revenues as a share of GDP are projected to remain above their 50-year average, but spending has grown to a historically high 23% of GDP from 19% before the financial crisis. Only half that increase is driven by retiring baby boomers, whose growth is expected to increase spending by another 2% of GDP over 10 years. And, importantly, government spending does not seem to be subject to reflection or analysis.
A political resolution doesn’t seem likely. Retirees seem intent on keeping what was promised them and avoiding benefit cuts. Policymakers are unlikely to raise middle-class taxes—they are engineering cuts by expanding the child tax credit. Heavy tax increases on the highest earners are estimated to contribute less than 2% of GDP.
The only answer here is economic growth--serious growth in a pro-growth economic and political atmosphere--and restrained spending, qualities absent in most political toolkits. And such policies are impossible among those hoarders of outmoded, confiscatory, redistributing (and hostile) weak-minded philosophies periodically exhumed from ancient European graveyards.
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