The Federal Fiscal Horse Runs Uphill, but Not Downhill
By Robert Higgs • Saturday March 2, 2013 5:22 PM PDT • 4 Comments
Funny, isn’t it? When federal spending was accelerating like a race horse bolting out of a burning barn in FY 2008 and FY 2009, Congress did not encounter any insuperable problems in appropriating the huge amounts of additional funds (and running up the public debt rapidly to pay for its sudden extravagance), but now that Congress is being called on to trim its planned additional spending by a tiny amount, the horse can’t even get out of the starting gate. I’d name this horse “Ratchet Effect” and bet serious money on him at the fiscal track.
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A rhetorical question rather than a comment: Do any governments at any level have any exercisable powers that do not in some way involve exercising control over the lives of of the governed and their actions? Are all governments at all levels in fact mostly helpless, mostly hopeless and mostly useless?
Tom | Mar 5, 2013 | Reply
To answer your first question, yes, in rare instances governments can run businesses that are self-supporting and therefore not a burden on taxpayers. The U.S. Mint sales of gold and silver coins comes to mind. Or some local governments’ recreation programs. This sort of thing doesn’t add up to a hill of beans.
Warren Gibson | Mar 9, 2013 | Reply
Actually for the last few decades it has grown steadily in essentially a linear trend. As this page points out, with more graphs:
http://www.politicsdebunked.com/article-list/federal-spending
” The Federal government spent 3.7 times as much per person in 2011 as it did 50 years ago in 1961 when Democratic hero JFK was in office (adjusted for inflation). If Kennedy were around to propose his level of spending today he’d be denounced by the mainstream media as a radical extremist. State and local governments combined spent 4 times as much per capita. “
Politics Debunked | Apr 16, 2013 | Reply