World-News

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

01/30/09

Putting aside Bizarro economics, for now, and my wholesale rejection of same, there is one way we can stimulate the economy with a mighty injection of cash into the hands of one and all. No, not another government subsidy, but the cutting of the single largest federal expenditure down to a manageable size: the U.S. military budget. Larger than all the other ‘defense’ budgets in the world combined, this unimaginable sum is not even known, for sure, but of one thing we can be certain: the hidden costs are much more than anyone suspects...

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14163



$646,214 per government job

Cato Institute
by Alan Reynolds

01/29/09

House Democrats propose to spend $550 billion of their two-year, $825 billion ’stimulus bill’ (the rest of it being tax cuts). Most of the spending is unlikely to be timely or temporary. Strangely, most of it is targeted toward sectors of the economy where unemployment is the lowest. The December unemployment rate was only 2.3% for government workers and 3.8% in education and health. Unemployment rates in manufacturing and construction, by contrast, were 8.3% and 15.2% respectively. Yet 39% of the $550 billion in the bill would go to state and local governments. Another 17.3% would go to health and education — sectors where relatively secure government jobs are also prevalent. If the intent of the plan is to alleviate unemployment, why spend over half of the money on sectors where unemployment is lowest?

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9913


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



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