It is often said or assumed that Social Security is headed toward bankruptcy. A recent Gallup poll showed that 60 percent of American workers do not believe Social Security will be able to pay them benefits when they retire. Yet for over two decades, no significant changes have been made to the federal entitlement program … Read more
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that spending in the United States on health care – both by individuals and by the government – has skyrocketed past the growth in the U.S. gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office reported that health care spending accounted for 15 percent of GDP in 2010, up … Read more
Receipts Personal Income Tax Since the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, the personal income tax has provided the federal government’s single largest source of revenue. The tax consists of six brackets, levying progressively higher rates on higher levels of income. For example, a taxpayer earning $5,000 of taxable income per year would pay … Read more
When America’s founders gathered at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they did so in large part to raise taxes to finance a national military. Since then, defense spending has been a priority in the federal budget. As America’s role in the world expanded, so did American military expenditures – amounting to nearly $720 billion in … Read more
“Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end.” With these words in Feb. 2009, President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the … Read more
In Stutsman County, North Dakota, local authorities are quite literally unpaving their roads. Unable to pay for repaving of deteriorated rural roads, counties across the country have resorted to replacing asphalt with gravel or other rough surfaces as a way to save money. Click to See Full Graphic This does not bode well for the … Read more
Natoma Canfield is a 50-year-old cancer patient in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2009 she paid some $10,000 in deductibles after her insurance premiums increased 25 percent. Unable to sustain an additional 40 percent rate hike in 2010, she dropped her coverage, and has since been diagnosed with leukemia. Click for full graphic On his final health … Read more
When he accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1992, Bill Clinton promised “an America where we end welfare as we know it.” Clinton fulfilled his pledge four years later when Congressional legislation replaced the former welfare entitlement system with the current program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). During the late 1990s, the reformed … Read more
It was a little skirmish in a summer of big political battles. But the defeat of the DISCLOSE Act, a modest campaign finance reform measure pushed by President Obama and the Democrats, might have lasting importance. If Congress can’t even require transparency of the corporations that fund our elections, what hope is there of diminishing … Read more
I was disappointed to read The Crimson’s editorial this morning regarding Martin Peretz and the Harvard research fellowship that is apparently going to be endowed in his name. Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, recently wrote on his personal blog that “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims” and that he could not … Read more