1. Rauch and Bartlett say yes.
2. Why did stress testing fail?
5. Nigerians try to swindle Citibank.
Is 21 percent gone?
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btw, Tyler, nice mention in the Times of London.
I completely disagree with Jonathan Rauch’s points and wonder why the share of government going up to and past 25 percent of GDP doesn’t make everyone scream. This makes for a bleak future, burdened by an unproductive, meddlesome quarter of the economy.
my take on the article:
– % of gdp of govt spikes based on short term considerations:
– increased govt spending due to stimulus legislation
– increased govt spending due to financial bailout
– decrease in gdp
– ideological magazine takes one data point and tries to scare its readership with this data point
– who knows whether we will be at 21 or 24 percent in four years. it’s not predictable at this point. if it is a problem, we can try to fix it later.
Speaking of new budget plateaus, I have not seen a clear accounting recently on military spending, either in nominal or % of GDP terms. I do know that the stated defense budget has grown sharply, and I also know that a lot of military spending has been in off-budget bills to fund this decade’s wars. I would not be surprised to hear that the total has doubled in real terms during the Bush era. Much of Clinton’s budget success was scaling back military spending, which most went along with in the drive for a balanced budget. Conservatives could gain budget cred in my mind if they would support steep decreases in that part of the budget, rather than whipping Obama for that.
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