Tag: "stimulus"

Reason for Slow Recovery: Bad Government

Here is Gary Becker:

While slow recoveries from major financial crises are common, employment would have increased considerably more rapidly, and unemployment would have fallen much faster, were it not for several factors special to this recovery. Scott Baker, Nicholas Bloom and Steven Davis have studied changes in economic policy uncertainty since 1985, and have constructed an index of the degree of economic policy uncertainty during the past 26 years (see their “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty”)…

[S]ome of the uncertainty during this financial crisis was avoidable if Congress and the president had not passed an ineffective stimulus package over a divided Congress, if they had resolved the budget deficit and debt ceiling issues (especially by trying to get entitlements under control), if agreement on tax policy toward broader and flatter taxes had been achieved, and if clearer policies were adopted about which companies would be allowed to go bankrupt and which would be bailed out.

 

May 07, 2012 | 4 comments | by

Where Did The Stimulus Money Go?

Stimulus money didn’t go to the states hardest hit by the recession. States with higher bankruptcy, foreclosure and poverty rates as well as lower incomes got significantly less money. And states that had higher unemployment rates received virtually exactly the same amount of money as states with lower rates.

But there was one group that significantly benefited: unions.  The top 10 states receiving the most stimulus money got more than 70% more money per person than the 10 states that received the least money.  At the same time those states had more than twice the share of their workers represented by unions.

John Lott and Grover Norquist editorial in Investors’ Business Daily.

Apr 10, 2012 | 6 comments | by

Obama Stimulus Impact: Zero.

The bottom-line is the federal government borrowed funds from the public, transferred these funds to state and local governments, who then used the funds mainly to reduce borrowing from the public. The net impact on aggregate economic activity is zero…

The absence of any discernible impact of federal grants on state and local government purchases should come as no surprise to students of U.S. fiscal policy history. In 1979, the late Ned Gramlich…found that the federal grants to state and local governments had little effect on their purchases of goods and services.            

Full article on the “multiples of nothing” in Obama’s stimulus mega-bill.

Dec 09, 2010 | 4 comments | by

72,000 Stimulus Checks Went to Dead People, Economy Has Been Sinking Since April of 2006, and Greenspan on Fear Produced by Bad Government Policies

Arnold Kling: labor capacity utilization is at its lowest level since the recession began. [This implies] the economy has been sinking since April of 2006 and continues to sink, with the decline only interrupted by temporary Census Bureau hiring earlier this year.

Greenspan: fear, produced by bad government policies is undermining the recovery. Same point made by yours truly here.

Doctors: Smartphones with medical apps are not enough; you also need us.  “There’s never a time where I would base a clinical decision on solely what I find on one of these apps.”

Oct 08, 2010 | 4 comments | by

Your Tax Dollars at Work

$24,000 per clunker?

$160,000 per stimulus job?

Nov 04, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/8/11

The Congressional Budget Office answer to federal deficits is a laundry list of middle class tax hikes. 

Obama to email list: Bypass town hall meetings and go straight to you Congress member's office.

New stimulus plan: Congress buys eight $70 million luxury jets so members won't have to fly with ordinary folks.

"She had fun, fun, fun ‘til her daddy took her T-Bird away."

Aug 11, 2009 | 7 comments | by

Health Alert: War on the Poor

What is the worst feature of the stimulus package and other legislation being considered by Congress? It is the systematic attempt to undermine 25 years of reform of social institutions — reforms designed to liberate the lowest-income families from welfare state programs that trap them and make them perpetual wards of the state.

She Works Hard for the Money

Apr 06, 2009 | 9 comments | by

Health IT Money May Not Work

This is from a story from the Associated Press:

Billions of stimulus dollars meant to spur doctors to switch to electronic record-keeping may not be enough to do the job, [according to a new study].

Using government cost estimates, researchers found that it would cost about $124,000 for a single doctor or small practice to upgrade to electronic health records over a five year period…….. But the total incentive payments a doctor could get over that time period only add up to $44,000.

In 2015, penalties start to kick in for doctors who haven't switched to electronic record-keeping. But in one scenario mapped by Avalere, the starting penalty would be $5,100 a year – far less than how much it would cost to install and maintain an electronic health system.

Mar 17, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Health IT Problems Again and Again

Various law blogs are reporting that the stimulus bill contained another reason for providers to avoid electronic medical records: Breaches of more than 500 patients trigger requirements to report to HHS, advertise on Web sites, notify individual patients, and report to the local media. It takes work to violate 500 paper records. Violating 500 electronic records might take no more than a couple of keystrokes.

The stimulus bill contains HIPAA extension provisions that will probably add significant regulatory costs to an already overburdened system. It creates more jobs for bureaucratic overseers and makes service providers like Google Health subject to HIPAA restrictions. [link, link, and PointofLaw, February 23.]

Mar 04, 2009 | 3 comments | by

More on Health IT

Here is in-depth analysis by the law firm McDermott, Will & Emery (MWE) of the Health Information Technology section of the new stimulus package. The lesson – if you would like to participate in the Brave New World of federally-prescribed Health IT, the first thing to do is hire a lawyer.

The provisions of the bill are nearly incomprehensible. And the time frames are completely unrealistic. Standards are supposed to be set by December 31, 2009 – that's ten months from now, folks. And "each person in the United States" is supposed to be using an Electronic Health Record (EHR) by 2014. There are committees galore and grants to the states and "qualified not-for-profit entities." There is money available to providers to "purchase certified EHR technology," and "incentives" under Medicare and Medicaid to become a "meaningful EHR user." For physicians, the incentive is a bonus of up to $18,000 for 2011 and 2012, and decreasing after that.

Mar 02, 2009 | 4 comments | by
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