Economy Declined as Government Spending Rose
By James D. Agresti February 4, 2013 In the wake of stunning news that the U.S. economy shrunk by 0.1% in the last quarter of 2012, prominent media outlets and…
Read moreThe Effects of Regulations on the Economy
…billion. Conversely, the authors of a 2013 paper in the Journal of Economic Growth conducted a study that found the effects of federal regulations on the U.S. economy have been…
Read moreIs the Economy to Blame for Our “Runaway National Debt”?
…following the collapse of the housing bubble. No responsible newspaper would discuss this as a problem of the budget as opposed to a problem with a horribly underemployed economy. As…
Read moreAdvocates for Social Welfare Benefits Turn the Truth About Federal Spending on Its Head
…stimulate the economy. Yet, as detailed below, even though such spending quickly rose to record levels, the economy has been burdened with high unemployment for more than four years since…
Read moreFact-Based Poll Reveals Fictions Believed by Voters
…local—now consumes a larger portion of the economy or a smaller portion of the economy than it did 10 years ago? Correct Answer: A larger portion. Since 2009, combined government…
Read moreDo Large National Debts Harm Economies?
…that would speed recovery, but in 2012, government was still consuming 9% more of the U.S. economy than in 2007, and the economy was still sputtering. From a long-term perspective,…
Read moreWarren Buffett’s Fraudulent Tax Claims (Part 2)
…investing ever written.”) While these tax-avoidance strategies may have helped Buffett, creditable sources explain how such logical reactions to taxes can harm the economy. For example: [I]t is marginal tax…
Read moreHow Hard and Effectively do Americans Work?
…an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump.” (Hat tip: Larry Elder) Given the size and sophistication of the U.S. economy, the reasons for the current economic weakness entail…
Read moreA Factual Look at Obama’s Presidency
…oath” to “meet the challenges we faced,” the economy was “shrinking at more than eight percent,” but now “eight years later” it is “growing at more than three percent.” In…
Read moreQuantitative Easing: Who Wins and Who Loses?
…unavoidable” in order to save the economy. He also noted that the “large firms that the government is now compelled to support to preserve financial stability were among the greatest…
Read moreAre Today’s Newborns the Luckiest Generation in U.S. History?
By James D. Agresti May 3, 2016 In his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett—the world’s third richest person—remarked on the state of the U.S. economy…
Read moreThe New York Times Regularly Publishes Falsehoods That Spur Violent Unrest and Civic Dysfunction
…police. incite class warfare. stagnate the economy. slander the United States. sow racial animosity. empower criminals by disarming their victims. cover up corruption and fraud. harm the nation’s education system….
Read moreHow Biofuel Profiteers Fleece Average Americans
…which drain household budgets and harm the broader economy. As the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics explains, “Biofuels also tend to require subsidies and other market interventions to compete…
Read moreMaddow’s Tax and Deficit Doubletalk
…that speech, the national debt was $8.3 trillion or 61% of the nation’s economy. The national debt now stands at $17.5 trillion or 102% of the economy. Hence, even after…
Read moreWhat the $20 Trillion National Debt Means to You
…the national debt as a portion of the nation’s economy or gross domestic product (GDP). This is a more moderate gauge of debt in modern times, because GDP has grown…
Read moreMaximum Facts About the Minimum Wage
…income include the destruction of 1.4 million jobs, a slight decline in the overall economy, increased inflation, more government debt, and greater burdens on taxpayers. CBO is clear that minimum…
Read morePaul Krugman’s Claims About the Dangers of Government Debt
…this imposes “some cost on the economy, if nothing else by causing a diversion of resources away from productive activities into tax avoidance and evasion.” Krugman’s portrayal of this issue…
Read morePoll Reveals Voters Misinformed About Key Issues
…5 years, which has grown at a faster rate, the U.S. economy or the national debt? (Correct answer given by 87% of all voters.) In 1960, governments paid for 24%…
Read moreThe SAT Is Feeding Students Solar Industry Propaganda
…50 percent between 2010 and 2013.” “solar power is now competitive with other energy sources in many markets.” solar energy is a “ray of sunshine for the U.S. economy.” This…
Read moreFactCheck.org’s Double Standards on the Stimulus
…the economy would have taken in the absence of the law.” In plain language, there are numerous variables that affect the economy, and there is no factual way to isolate…
Read moreReporters Distort the Truth About Government Spending
…week: For the first time in 40 years, the government sector of the American economy has shrunk during the first three years of a presidential administration. Spending by the federal…
Read moreCan We Prevent a Debt-Driven Economic Collapse Without Reforming Entitlements?
…other critical functions” in order to prevent an “explosive” debt that “swamps the economy.” Bernstein says “it is well within our means” to reduce the national debt by following the…
Read moreBlame for the National Debt
…no single measure accounts for every relevant aspect of it, but the ratio of gross national debt to the size of the U.S. economy (GDP) is a logical and evenhanded…
Read moreDebt Versus Deficit: Obama’s Bait and Switch
…out to be. The deficits of recent years have been the largest in modern history, peaking at 10.1% of the entire nation’s economy (GDP) in 2009. For context, the 2009…
Read moreThe National Debt Is Rising—Not Declining
…large debt doesn’t necessarily strangle an economy.” What Lauter and the others neglect to mention is that the debt from World War II (1941-1945) was fleeting because it was quickly…
Read moreWhat Will Obama’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations Cost and Achieve?
…in greenhouse gas emissions at little cost to the economy.” He says, for example, that a study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows that the total cost per household…
Read morePre-Election Poll: Voters Broadly Misinformed About Key Issues
…of Republican voters, 79% of third-party voters, and 67% of undecided voters. Question 6: Over the past five years, which has grown at a faster rate, the U.S. economy or…
Read morePoll Reveals Voters are Uninformed About Major Issues
…five years, which has grown at a faster rate, the U.S. economy or the national debt? Correct Answer: The national debt. Over the past five years, the national debt grew…
Read moreEffects of Immigration From Impoverished Nations
…of the institutions supporting economic activity.” “if an economy has a very efficient judicial system, clear property rights, and an effective government, the result will be a higher total wealth….”…
Read moreGovernment-Mandated Benefits Suppress Workers’ Wages
…take from growth, it adds to growth. Earned sick leave gives workers a lot more confidence and adds to their participation in the economy. Those claims are naive and potentially…
Read moreFederal Government’s 2017 Fiscal Shortfall Is 74% Worse Than Reported Budget Deficit
…portion of the nation’s economy, federal taxes and spending rose steeply between 1930 and World War II. Since then, taxes have risen slightly, but spending has risen more. The vast…
Read moreFederal Fiscal Shortfall Surges Past $100 Trillion
…size of the U.S. economy. 29 times annual federal revenues. 91% of the combined net worth of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations, including all assets in savings, real estate,…
Read moreEverything You’ve Heard About the Debt Limit is Wrong
…spending are largely to blame. Contradicting those claims, the share of the U.S. economy collected in federal taxes has been roughly level for 80+ years, and military spending has plummeted…
Read moreThe Impact of Obamacare and Ryancare on Medicare
…by the use of price controls. For various reasons, healthcare spending per person has increased much faster than the rate of inflation and the growth of the economy over the…
Read moreKrugman and Obama Mislead on Debts and Deficits
…projections indicate that federal deficits and debts threaten workers’ wages, government’s ability to fund its programs, and the overall health of the economy. Thus, when politicians and commentators mislead citizens…
Read moreObamacare’s Effects on Wages
…supply will probably occur among lower-wage workers, the reduction in aggregate compensation (wages, salaries, and fringe benefits) and the impact on the overall economy will be proportionally smaller than the…
Read moreNew Treasury Data Shows Federal Shortfall of $670,000 Per U.S. Household
…on an economy. However, a broad range of evidence indicates that excessive government debt can cause far-reaching negative outcomes, such as lower wages, weak economic growth, increased inflation, higher taxes,…
Read moreFalse Arguments Against Evidence of Vote Fraud
…the economy, and an enormous array of Census data. These surveys typically use much larger samples than the one used by Just Facts, and thus, the margins of sampling error…
Read moreRape Facts and Falsehoods
…in the United States, governments, scientists, and scholars often obtain such data through scientific surveys. This is true of frequently quoted government data on crime, education, employment, the economy, and…
Read moreThe Real “Big Money” in Politics
…during the Great Recession in 2009. According to the Times, Slim did this when the Times corporation “looked to be in peril” as the “world economy” was “struggling and credit…
Read moreWidespread Poverty Stats Greatly Overstate the Number of Americans Who Are Destitute
…million illegal immigrants worked “in the underground economy” during 2010. In 2016, the IRS reported that 63% of income not reported to the IRS by third parties (like employers) is…
Read moreVital Facts About Covid-19
…the economy. Thus, overreacting can ultimately kill more people than are saved. The same applies to people who are flooding supermarkets to stockpile food, toilet paper, and other supplies. In…
Read moreAOC’s Baseless Accusation That the U.S. Is a “Brutal, Barbarian Society”
…far exceeds all that the Government could have done. Although federal, state, and local governments consume about 33.5% of the U.S. economy—at an average cost of $54,000 per year to…
Read moreThe Hard Facts on Covid-19 Science Denial
…than their Democratic counterparts. However, it is flagrantly deceitful to report that Republican states “peddle denial,” put “the economy over health,” or failed “the Covid-19 test,” when in fact, their…
Read moreSocial Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide With Leftism, Not Racism
…unemployment rate has been twice that of the white rate….” This, he says, is an example of the “systemic racial injustice embedded in the economy.” Yet, data cited by Democratic…
Read moreGenuine Facts About Omicron, Delta, Naturally Acquired Immunity, and Vaccines
…the Washington Post). sagging economic growth (Reuters & Yahoo Finance). “a lot of the problems with the economy” (CNN). While the Delta variant is much more transmissible than earlier SARS-CoV-2…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…the economy in 1930. Governments also spent another 10.9% more of the economy than they collected in revenues. This is an effective tax on tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers because it…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
In 2022, what portion of the U.S. economy was consumed by federal, state, and local government spending?…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
Relative to the size of the U.S. economy, is the current national debt larger than any other era of U.S. history?…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…that consumer spending causes prosperity is based on a misunderstanding of Keynesian economics, which posits that governments can stimulate the economy by borrowing money and giving it to people to…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…the research actually showed what previous studies had found: economic growth typically declines by about 30% when government debt exceeds 90% of an economy. The authors of this study, however,…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…the effect, not the cause, of a productive healthy economy.” The notion that consumer spending causes prosperity is based on a misunderstanding of Keynesian economics, which posits that governments can…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…1960 to 2022, federal spending rose from 17% of the U.S. economy to 24%, while social programs rose from 21% of all federal outlays to more than 60%. In the…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…$121,760.” Because association does not prove causation, these outcomes cannot automatically be attributed to President Trump, but they do disprove numerous negative media portrayals of the economy during Trump’s tenure….
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…of China.” Taiwan is currently forbidden from having representation at the UN while having a larger population than 72% of UN members and a larger economy than 85% of them….
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…policy views. This Board exercises powers that have wide-ranging ripple effects on the economy, such as inflation, interest rates, and employment. The Governors of the Federal Reserve cannot be audited…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
In 2022, the interest on the national debt was $775 billion, or 15.3% of federal revenues. Even though the national debt is currently a larger portion of the U.S. economy…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…making those assets less affordable for people with little wealth. One way to measure asset inflation is to compare a country’s net wealth to the size of its economy. Since…
Read moreQuestion of the Day
…of its purchasing power over the past 53 years. The main driver of inflation is government creating and circulating more money than its economy needs. This causes the purchasing power…
Read more