What Runaway Spending?
By Gerald Friedman | March/April 2013
Federal spending as a share of GDP has declined sharply. The real cause of the deficit is declining revenue due to tax cuts and recession. Read more »
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Beyond Deficit Scare-Mongering
By Ellen Frank | March/April 2013
From the fiscal cliff to the sequester to the debt-ceiling, conservatives’ real aim in their fiscal brinkmanship is to gut Social Security and Medicare. Read more »
Don’t Drive Off the Fiscal Cliff
By Heidi Garrett-Peltier | September/ October 2012
The U.S. economy is set to go off the so-called “fiscal cliff” at midnight on December 31, 2012. What would go over the cliff is our hope of economic recovery. Read more »
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Why the United States Is Not Greece
By John Miller and Katherine Sciacchitano | January/February 2012
Even for those who understand that cutting deficits right now will only weaken a still-fragile recovery, and that weakening the recovery will only increase deficits, getting past the argument that “a eurozone crisis is on its way” is no easy task. Here is a self-defense lesson. Read more »
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The People’s Budget
By John Miller | September/October 2011
A plan to get deficit-reduction off our backs. Read more »
Why Do They Oppose More Stimulus?
By Arthur MacEwan | January/February 2011
Dear Dr. Dollar: Why are conservatives, especially wealthy conservatives, against stimulating the economy through deficit spending? Don’t businesses’ profits and the incomes of the wealthy depend on economic growth? Read more »
That Hurt! Let’s Do It Again.
By John Miller | November/December 2010
Responding to the Journal’s nostalgia for the Reagan tax-cuts. Read more »
Deficits: Real Issue, Phony Debates
By Rick Wolff | November/December 2010
What’s at stake on either side of the class divide. Read more »
W(h)ither the Dollar?
By Katherine Sciacchitano | May/June 2010
The United States has recently faced a vacillating dollar, calls to replace it as the global reserve currency, and calls for less spending and more saving in the United States. This all comes at an awkward time given the level of public outlays required to deal with the crisis and the need to attract capital to pay for them. Read more »
Myths of the Deficit
By Marty Wolfson | March/April 2010
Why do people think that it is more important for the government to reduce the deficit now, rather than to spend money to create jobs? Read more »
Church of Fiscal Conservatism
By Barry Deutsch | March/April 2010
Gospel of the Lord of the Deficit, a comic. See more »
Economic Rights, Then and Now
By Susan Feiner | Web-Only | January/February 2010
What is the state of the economic rights that FDR unveiled in his “Second Bill of Rights” 66 years ago? Read more »
Empire and Entitlements
By Arthur MacEwan | January/February 2010
Dear Dr. Dollar: In his book Colossus (2004), Niall Ferguson argues that a major problem with Social Security and Medicare is their underfunded liabilities-to the tune of $45 trillion. Can you comment on this claim? Read more »
State Budget Blues
By Marianne Hill | November/December 2009
States are slashing budgets to close gaps that are averaging a jaw-dropping 24% this year. Read more »
The Economic Crisis in the States
By Gerald Friedman | November/December 2009
Two intrinsic features of the U.S. system of government come together to threaten a social disaster. Read more »
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deficit
By John Miller | November/December 2009
You would have thought the budget deficit had morphed into Dr. Strangelove’s doomsday machine from the howling that followed the publication of Congressional Budget Office projections. Read more »
Fiscal Policy and “Crowding Out”
By Alejandro Reuss | May/June 2009
Conservative economists argue that the massive government spending required for fiscal stimulus “crowds out” private spending. What was Keynes’ response? Read more »
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Why are things getting worse?
By Arthur MacEwan | March/April 2009
Dear Dr. Dollar: I learned in my economics classes that in a market economy, problems tend to be self-correcting. So why don’t we see this kind of self-correction now? Read more »
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War Spending, Deficits, and Economic Stimulus
By Arthur MacEwan | March/April 2008
Dear Dr. Dollar: Doesn’t all the war spending stimulate the economy? And shouldn’t the Bush tax cuts do the same? So why are we falling into recession? Read more »
Earlier articles from Dollars & Sense:
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Dollar Anxiety
By John Miller | Jan/Feb 2005
Global economic and military muscle allows the United States to be a debtor nation without paying the consequences. But will it last? Read more »
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State Budgets in Crisis
By Ben Boothby | May/June 2003
How states are coping with the worst budget deficits since the Great Depression. Read more »
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Balancing the Budgets: Who Will Pay?
By Chuck Collins | Mar/Apr 2002
How can states solve their fiscal dilemmas? By shifting the tax burden onto the well-to-do. Read more »
