Budget

Hillary Clinton’s proposal to spend $350 billion on “affordable” tuition may have been outrageous, but at least it provoked some poignant comments on the pitfalls of big government.

A June 30 Boston Globe editorial moaned about how "state funding for youth jobs" in Massachusetts "faces damaging cuts." Two kinds of "cuts" are occurring. One is, as of the time of the editorial, an absolute cut in dollar funding for the related government program, known as YouthWorks. However, there is another more significant cut in the number of jobs which could be provided even if dollar…

Last week’s premiere of CBS’s new dramedy BrainDead certainly leaned left, but this week they were more evenhanded in their treatment of the right. Instead of the typical lefty caricature of conservatives, you get the sense they actually might have an understanding of real, sincerely-held conservative principles, which makes the Republicans’ dialogue in the show so much more realistic than…

CBS’s new dramedy BrainDead is a lefty political version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Set in DC with a government shutdown looming, alien ants from a meteor that crashed in Russia enter the ears of humans, push their brains out, and give them a different personality. The pilot episode is titled “The Insanity Principle: How Extremism In Politics Is Threatening Democracy In The 21st Century.”

When liberals call Republicans “deniers,” it typically has to do with climate change. Jonathan Chait alleges big-time GOP denial on a non-scientific matter. “Republican voting support is increasingly coterminous with white racial resentment even as conservatives firmly believe in their own racial innocence,” wrote Chait in a Tuesday post. “Conservatives deny the existence of racism in the…

A basic economic premise holds that when the price of something rises, people seek to economize on its use. They seek substitutes for that which has risen in price. Recent years have seen proposals for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Some states and localities, such as Seattle, have already legislated a minimum wage of $15 an hour.

Philip Bump and the Washington Post have apparently had a couple of pretty bad days. The Post had to endure having to cover, and cover for, an absolutely awful jobs report released Friday morning. That news made their beloved Dear Leader, who had just celebrated the allegedly wonderful economic accomplishments seen during his presidency on Wednesday, look quite foolish. Never fear: By Paragraph 4…

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's New Day on CNN, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman defended his most recent column arguing that the various "fibs" told by Hillary Clinton are not as bad as "giant whoppers" told by Donald Trump as he suggested the Democratic nominee is the preferable choice for President.

Former Reagan official David Stockman predicted that whoever was elected in 2016 would “inherit a recession.” Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Ronald Reagan, said on May 25, 2016, that Wall Street would undergo “massive panic and selling.”  

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait has contempt for both Donald Trump (“his appeal operates…at a sub-intellectual level”) and those who’ve voted for him (“the Republican Party turns out to be filled with idiots”). Still, suggested Chait in a Thursday post, Trump and his supporters have unwittingly clarified something important: the Tea Party movement is not and never was truly conservative,…

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton believes we're supposed to be impressed by the idea of putting her husband Bill, in the Associated Press's words, "in charge of revitalizing the economy." Yep, the old "2-for-1" offer from the early 1990s is back. In 1993, President Bill put First Lady Hill in charge of health care. Fortunately, nothing tangible resulted, but we did get an…

In an analysis for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times business section, Eduardo Porter trumpeted that the real issue ailing the American economy and impeding on its improvement is the lack of mass government jobs programs similar to its “large and underappreciated role in reshaping” the country during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

During a discussion of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump indicating that he was willing to negotiate over both taxes and the minimum wage, and possibly end up raising taxes on the wealthy, CNN's Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room praised the GOP candidate for having a willingness to compromise, unlike "some very conservative Republican hardliners."

Just in time for tomorrow's first-quarter economic growth announcement from the government, Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics Editor is telling readers: "Don't Sweat America's Upcoming Microscopic GDP Growth." Besides, Peter Coy writes, people need to get used to the supposedly inescapable fact that "Normal growth for the U.S. economy is just a lot lower than it used to be." Americans shouldn't…