Clark Center Forum

 

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

Because all federal spending and taxes must be approved by both houses of Congress and the executive branch, a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes. 

by Brian Barry The electoral map, the demographics behind President Barack Obama’s re-election and the high-end tax increases that were just wrung from the Republicans give Democrats reason to believe that long-term political trends are on their side in budget negotiations. This view, however, ignores what is happening at the state level. Read article> 

See a discussion of the IGM economic experts panel, examining how much economists agree and disagree on major issues and comparing economists’ views with those of the general public. This video features original research by Gordon Dahl and Roger Gordon from the University of California at San Diego and Paola Sapienza (Kellogg) and Luigi Zingales […] 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

The federal government would make the average U.S. citizen better off by using policies that directly focus more on increasing small business growth than growth of economic output overall. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

The annual indexing of Social Security benefits to increases in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (the CPI-W) leads to higher benefits than would be required to compensate recipients for genuine cost-of-living increases. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statement:

The Brookings Institution recently described a US carbon tax of $20 per ton, increasing at 4% per year, which would raise an estimated $150 billion per year in federal revenues over the next decade. Given the negative externalities created by carbon dioxide emissions, a federal carbon tax at this rate would involve fewer harmful net distortions to the US economy than a tax increase that generated the same revenue by raising marginal tax rates on labor income across the board. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A: Because federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will continue to grow under current policy beyond the 10-year window of most political budget debates, it is easy for a politician to devise a budget plan that would reduce federal deficits over the next decade without really making the U.S. fiscally sustainable.

B: Comparing two plans that would reduce federal budget deficits by identical amounts in each of the next 10 years, one that did so partly by reducing significantly the long-term growth rate of Medicare and Medicaid spending would do more to make the U.S. budget fiscally sustainable than one that did not lower the growth of these spending programs. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel statements:

A: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including the incentives of banks to ensure their own liquidity and solvency in the future — the benefits of bailing out U.S. banks in 2008 will end up exceeding the costs.

B: Because GM and Chrysler were bailed out in 2008-09, the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would it have been if Congress and the executive branch had not intervened.

C: Taking into account all of the economic consequences — including effects on corporate managers' incentives and on creditors' expectations of how their claims will be treated in future bankruptcies — the benefits of bailing out GM and Chrysler will end up exceeding the costs.