District swings from deficit to surplus
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As changes to collective bargaining powers for public workers take effect today, the Kaukauna Area School District is poised to swing from a projected $400,000 budget shortfall next year to a $1.5 million surplus due to health care and retirement savings.
“These impacts will allow the district to hire additional …
Once Again, We Cannot Pay For Social Security By Ending the Bush Tax Cuts on High Earners
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You may have seen charts floating around that supposedly show that we could pay for the Social Security shortfall by simply rolling back the Bush tax cuts “for the rich”. Megan McCardle has seen those charts too and she explains why they’re misleading and wrong.
The CBPP gets its figure by taking present values …
The Role that Bush-Era Tax and Spending Policies Play in the Deficit
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The Tax Foundation crunches the numbers to see if it’s true that “the economic downturn, President Bush’s tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.”
1) Tax revenues have fluctuated largely with the economy, dropping precipitously in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, …
Iceland’s Banks Come In From the Cold
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Everyone thinks that we needed to bail out the failing U.S. banks lest they collapse and, in their collapse, take down both the U.S. economy and the international economy, plunging the world into a new Great Depression and (potentially) a new Dark Age.
As it turns out, maybe not. Ásgeir Jónsson explains that Iceland allowed their …
Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work
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Alan Reynolds is great in explaining the income tax facts of life. Higher tax rates on the rich do not bring in nearly as much revenue as lower tax rates. It’s important to emphasize that tax rates are not the same as tax revenues. Higher rates do not automatically bring higher revenues. In fact, historically, …
Further Thoughts on Taxes and Spending
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William Voegeli takes on the idea that “it’s absurd to cut spending because we tax the wealthiest Americans less today than we did in 1955”.
First he illustrates that today’s rich pay more in taxes than the rich of 1955 did. (They pay more in real dollar terms, even if they do pay less in percentage …
Cut Head Start!
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This is a terrific program to cut.
Because, despite all the good intentions behind Head Start, the program is not working. It is failing to make any significant difference in the educational advancement of low-income children.
And that’s not based on a study from a partisan group …
The Rich Can’t Pay For It
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The grand total of the combined net worth of every single one of America’s billionaires is roughly $1.3 trillion. It does indeed sound like a “ton of cash” until one considers that the 2011 deficit alone is $1.6 trillion. So, if the government were to simply confiscate the entire net worth of all …
Another Record Month in the Red
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The U.S. ran a $233 billion deficit, just in February alone. Fun fact:
As noted in the Washington Times, the GOP’s proposed $61 billion in spending cuts is about 27 percent of the monthly deficit, while the Democratic plan — $6 billion — is just 3 percent of that figure.
Senator Rand Paul wants to cut $500 …
Walker’s Budget and Collective-Bargaining Reform
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Scott Walker has intended to cut state spending by $2.4 billion all along. The Budget Repair Bill, that limits collective bargaining, was intended to give local governments more tools to reduce costs besides just eliminating programs.
Christian Schneider details some of the ways that Walker’s repair bill will help cut costs.