Just came across this in my dissertation research, from a TV program produced by the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future:
“We may be through with the past, but the past is not done with us. Our...history shapes the future, even though it does not determine it."
The CPGAF was talking about demography, but I think this pretty well sums up the point of this blog.
Oct 25, 2010
I Heart Taxes
A Harvard graduate student (not me!) has created a great blog about all the good things our tax dollars buy: ihearttaxes.org. Just what I wanted to do, but funnier. Check it out! Great site.
Oct 1, 2010
Reparations and borrowed wars
This weekend, 92 years after World War I ended, Germany will finally pay off the reparations it owed for that war. These reparation payments were notoriously high, designed to punish the country that started the most destructive war Europe had ever seen. They succeeded at that - and led Germany into a hyperinflation economy in the 1920s, worsened the worldwide Great Depression, and helped the Nazis rise to power.
So I'm wondering whether 92 years from now - or longer - journalists will report that the United States has finally paid off the trillions of dollars in debt we incurred from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Americans overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Afghanistan and most Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, we have never been willing to pay for these wars through higher taxes. Instead, we've borrowed the money and we will be making payments on those debts for generations to come. Already some have asked whether these debts helped contribute to the Great Recession we're now experiencing. What will the historians say 92 years from now about the long-term effects of these debts?
So I'm wondering whether 92 years from now - or longer - journalists will report that the United States has finally paid off the trillions of dollars in debt we incurred from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Americans overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Afghanistan and most Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, we have never been willing to pay for these wars through higher taxes. Instead, we've borrowed the money and we will be making payments on those debts for generations to come. Already some have asked whether these debts helped contribute to the Great Recession we're now experiencing. What will the historians say 92 years from now about the long-term effects of these debts?
Sep 13, 2010
Good Government
A couple of days ago I learned from a report on Marketplace that the federal government has the same number of employees today as it did in 1963. Despite hysterical claims from the right about the rise in big government, the thing that’s actually grown in the past five decades is government contracting: the use of private businesses to carry out the government’s work. Indeed, the federal government’s responsibilities have increased over time: in the past five years, the federal government's budget has tripled (after accounting for inflation). But rather than accomodating that increase through a comparable increase in government employees – subject to oversight, checks-and-balances, fair practice laws, and the like – we have contracted out some of the government’s most important business to companies whose legal fiduciary duty is to make a profit on that business. That is, they are legally required to maximize the difference between the money the government gives them and the money they actually spend on the project for which they’ve been contracted.
A good friend of my family’s, Elliott Sclar, wrote a book about this a few years back, You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell, 2001). There’s been a lot of press about this issue as it relates to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the United States now has more private contractors employed in those countries than members of the armed forces. Just last week James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times wrote about Blackwater’s 30+ shell companies that have won contracts from the U.S. government. Find this article. But we’ve ignored, for far too long, the outsourcing of our government’s responsibilities to private companies whose interests lie with shareholders rather than with all of us.
I’ve long thought that someone with a lot of money, say George Soros, should start a huge public relations campaign about the government services we benefit from, to remind people that government is not a bad thing. Something along the lines of, “Hey, do you like sidewalks? Do you like getting your trash picked up every week instead of having it piling up in the street? Do you enjoy streetlights? Guess who makes sure you have all those things? Gooooo government!” Obama seems to be taking on this theme recently, but I don’t think he can do it alone.
A good friend of my family’s, Elliott Sclar, wrote a book about this a few years back, You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell, 2001). There’s been a lot of press about this issue as it relates to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the United States now has more private contractors employed in those countries than members of the armed forces. Just last week James Risen and Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times wrote about Blackwater’s 30+ shell companies that have won contracts from the U.S. government. Find this article. But we’ve ignored, for far too long, the outsourcing of our government’s responsibilities to private companies whose interests lie with shareholders rather than with all of us.
I’ve long thought that someone with a lot of money, say George Soros, should start a huge public relations campaign about the government services we benefit from, to remind people that government is not a bad thing. Something along the lines of, “Hey, do you like sidewalks? Do you like getting your trash picked up every week instead of having it piling up in the street? Do you enjoy streetlights? Guess who makes sure you have all those things? Gooooo government!” Obama seems to be taking on this theme recently, but I don’t think he can do it alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)