The New Deal and Recovery, Part 27: Deposit Insurance
ConclusionPart 27: Deposit Insurance_____________________[1] To this list we might add a fourth item, noted by Golembe in a subsequentinterview, to wit: that the deposit " insurance " provided for by the 1933 Banking Act wasn ' t really insurance at all. Unlike genuine insurance policies, it covers depositors for losses regardless of whether the losses were due to recklessness on their or their banks ' part. And unlike genuine insurance funds, the FDIC ' s insurance " fund " is an accounting fiction, the truth being that the " premiums " it collects from banks go into the federal government ' s general coffers. " The gover...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 28, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs

Medicare and Social Security Are Responsible for 95 Percent of U.S. Unfunded Obligations
This report is intended to provide a short‐​term view of the government’s financial h ealth, including the baseline against which new spending and tax proposals will be scored. Such scores inform legislators about the fiscal impact their proposals would have on 10‐​year budget projections and whether they would trigger deficit‐​reduction rules such as CUT-GO, a House rule th at requires offsetting spending reductions if legislation were to increase mandatory spending during the decade.The Financial Report Deserves More AttentionThe Financial Report of the U.S. Government deserves more attention. The report ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 28, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia Source Type: blogs

TikTok Is More Than “Cute Dance Videos”
Paul MatzkoA TikTok ban would shut down a  platform used by 150 million Americans. It would be the single, largest impairment of free speech in the history of the United States. By some estimates, half of all TikTok users have uploaded a video to the platform, meaning that a congressional ban would, in one fell swoop, remove speech utter ed by ~75 million Americans.This is precisely why those advocating for a  forced sale or ban of TikTok because of its ownership by the Chinese company Bytedance have a habit of belittling the content on the platform. Critics will use a photo of teenagers doing the latest viral TikTok...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 28, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Paul Matzko Source Type: blogs

Federal Interest Costs, 1790 –2033
Chris EdwardsAs federal spending continues to rise, accumulated federal debt will soon reach all ‐​time highs relative to the size of the economy. Federal debt held by the public will hit 107 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2028, surpassing the previous peak after World War II. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) oftenhighlights the rising debt ‐​to‐​GDP ratio as a warning for policymakers to change course and avert a debt crisis.Another warning sign of a  coming debt crisis is soaring interest costs. With interest rates rising, federal interest payments have doubled from 1.2 percent of GDP in 2...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 27, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs

Are Taxes Really Lower in California than in Texas?
Marc JoffeWalletHub recently publishedan analysis of tax burdens by state that included some surprising findings: most notably, that Texas state and local governments impose heavier taxes on median earners than their California counterparts. Of the fifty states plus DC, the Golden State had the 12th lightest tax burden, while Texas ranked 41st.The counterintuitive conclusion that California is a  relatively low tax state caught the attention of State Senator Scott Wiener (D‑San Francisco)trumpetedthe results on his Twitter page.The narrative CA — now the world’s 4th largest economy — is imploding has never been tr...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 27, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Marc Joffe Source Type: blogs

The New Deal and Recovery, Part 26: The RFC, Conclusion
Conclusion___________________________[1] That the CCC did not contribute to recovery isn ' t very surprising, given that its particular aim, like that of its Hoover-era predecessor, the Federal Farm Board, and of New Deal farm policies generally, was not so much promoting growth in national income as assuring U.S. farmers their " fair share " of it. Hence Henry Wallace ' s statement, in his last (1940)annual report as Secretary of the Treasury, that " Even full domestic employment. . .would not remove the need " for those programs, and the programs ' persistence long after the depression ended. Yet the " fair share " goal ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 24, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs

Senator Lee Pushes Back at CBDCs
Nicholas Anthony andNorbert MichelThecase against central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) grows stronger by the day. Coming just a few weeks after Representative Tom Emmer (R ‑MN) introduceda similar bill in the House, Senator Mike Lee (R ‑UT) introduced theNo Central Bank Digital Currency Act, or No CBDC Act. CBDCs put the future of financial privacy, freedom, and markets at risk, and these bills would provide much ‐​needed safeguards against the United States issuing a CBDC. Senator Lee ’s bill, for example, would establish clear boundaries for not just the Federal Reserve (Fed), but also the Dep...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 24, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Nicholas Anthony, Norbert Michel Source Type: blogs

Friday Feature: eXtend Homeschool Tutorial
Colleen HroncichKym Kent is a busy homeschooling mom with six children who range in age from 13 to 24. But when she had a vision for a new program to help other homeschool families, she didn ’t shy away from stepping up and co‐​founding Bridge Elementary Homeschool Tutorial Ministries in 2017. After adding middle and high school classes over the years, the program is now calledeXtend Homeschool Tutorial.While Kym earned an economics degree from the University of Maryland, she says her real education started when she became a homeschooler in 2004. For nine years, Kym and her children participated i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 24, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Colleen Hroncich Source Type: blogs

Fast Facts about the U.S. Federal Debt
Romina BocciaHigh and rising government debt slows growth, crowds out private investment, limits the government ’s ability to respond to unexpected emergencies, and elevates the risk of a sudden fiscal crisis, where investors would lose confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar. This fact sheet lays out everything legislators and the public need to know about the U.S. federal debt to help them examine the unsustainability of the U.S. budget.The total or gross federal debt is$31.5 trillion. This is the debt subject to the debt limit.At120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the gross federal debt exceeds...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 23, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia Source Type: blogs

Government Shares — Even Golden Ones — Will Not Stop Bank Failures
Norbert MichelIn yet another sign that the universe loves freedom, my latestForbes column on the Silicon Valley Bank mess was published on the same day as Saule Omarova ’sNew York Timesop ‐​ed. My column makes the opposite case as Omarova, which I ’ll get to in just a bit. It also points out something that seems to be getting lost during these debates over whether to increase the FDIC insurance cap to more than $250,000: Omarova and her fellow travelers want the full provisioning of money by the government.As I write inmy piece:Further,they want to“clarify banks’ place in U.S. society and their relati...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 23, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Norbert Michel Source Type: blogs

Federal Spending Up 40 Percent Since 2019
Chris EdwardsFederal spending jumped from $4.45 trillion in 2019 to $6.21 trillion in 2023, according to theCongressional Budget Office. That is a  40 percent increase in four years. The pandemic supercharged the federal budget, and spending and deficits are expected to continue rising unless policymakers pursue major reforms.What is all the new spending since 2019? The answer is surprising, as shown in the two tables below. The main drivers of the recent increases have not been the largest three programs —Social Security, Medicare, and defense—but rather rapid growth in numerous other programs.Table 1  shows CBO spe...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 23, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Chris Edwards Source Type: blogs

Biden ’s Math of Just Taxing the Rich Doesn’t Add Up
Adam N. MichelDespite the headlines, thePresident ’s 2024 Budget demonstrates how challenging it is to raise significant new tax revenue from a  small minority of wealthy taxpayers. The budget raises about $1.8 trillion from non‐​corporate taxpayers over ten years. Yet, following all the rhetoric about the rich not paying their fair share, it should be striking that across more than twenty new and expanded taxes, the administration’s plan does not even raise enough revenue from wealthy taxpayers to cover new spending proposed in Biden’s budget, let alone theprojected $20 trillion deficit over the next ten years....
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 22, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Adam N. Michel Source Type: blogs

New Analysis Finds That Arkansas and Texas Have Most Onerous Occupational Licensing Regimes
Marc JoffeThe Archbridge Institute has released a newState Occupational Licensing Index which ranks the fifty states and District of Columbia by the number of occupations to which access is legally restricted. The research team of Noah Trudeau and Edward Timmons found that Arkansas was the most restrictive state, erecting barriers to 212 of the 331 professions they reviewed. Texas came in second, with 207 restricted occupations. At the other extreme, Kansas and Missouri were the least restrictive, regulating entry to 147 and 151 occupations, respectively.For those who associate red states with greater economic freedom...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 22, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Marc Joffe Source Type: blogs

Supreme Court Treads Carefully in Gonzalez
Will DuffieldLast month the Supreme Court heard oralarguments inGonzalez v. Google, a case about whether Section 230 protects platforms from liability for algorithmically recommended speech. This is the first time the Court has heard a case involving Section 230, and a bad ruling wouldremake the internet for the worse. Although many had feared that justices would use the opportunity to get at Big Tech, the Court was skeptical of petitioners ' counsel Eric Schnapper ’s textual arguments and mindful of algorithms ' almost universal use in sorting information online.Going intoGonzalez,there wasn ’t a circuit split about a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 22, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Will Duffield Source Type: blogs

Electric Vehicles Yet the Latest Example of Costly “Green” Protectionism
James BacchusOn the topic of electric vehicles and the unintended consequences of a  protectionist industrial policy, my Cato colleague Scott Lincicome recently noted on Twitter that German automaker Volkswagen just debuted a small, very affordable electric vehicle that won ’t be sold in the United States in part because of protectionist U.S. subsidies. In particular, several news outlets report that Volkswagen does not plan to build the ID.2all at its North American factories in Tennessee and Mexico—and thus it won’t be eligible for the EV tax credits passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.Volkswagen just d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 21, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: James Bacchus Source Type: blogs