Marco Rubio’s Ideas Work for Coral Gables

November 7, 2010 Leave a comment

Mr. Rubio argues for a number of conservative policies, but the ones right for our small city are eliminating wasteful spending, reducing taxes, keep down the debt (read, unfunded pensions) and reducing government “reaching further into our lives” (read excessive permitting, leaf blowers and pick-up trucks).

It is curious that while progressives and conservatives can’t agree on national policies, their views are totally in tandem in Coral Gables.

“The past two years provided a frightening glimpse at what could become of our great nation if we continue down the current path: wasteful spending, a growing debt and a government reaching ever further into our lives, even into our health care decisions,” he said. “It is nothing short of a path to ruin …”

…“This means preventing a massive tax increase scheduled to hit every American taxpayer at the end of the year. It means repealing and replacing the disastrous health care bill. It means simplifying our tax code, and tackling a debt that is pushing us to the brink of our own Greece-like day of reckoning.”

via President Obama, Marco Rubio face off on tax cuts – CSMonitor.com.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy

The Economy: Is There Realism in Coral Gables?

November 5, 2010 Leave a comment

The Economy

The few points increase in the stock market in the last few days (evidently not caused by the Republican wins, but by the decision of the Fed to expanding the money supply) and a slight increase of 150,000 new jobs (an economist said  it would take 15 years to get back employment lost in the recession at that rate) should not give us any hope for anything but a slow economic recovery.  Wake up Coral Gables, property values are not going to increase, and still may fall in the months and years ahead.

City of Coral Gables’ budgets, taxes and spending should be constructed with the realistic understanding that the real estate market is not going to save the city’s budget and the taxpayers are at the end of their ability to keep paying more and more taxes.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy

The Power of Ideas

November 4, 2010 Leave a comment

Wordle==Power of Ideas

I am interested in this quote from the book Great Transformations:  Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century, by Mark Blyth (Cambridge University Press, 2002), as follows:

“Ideas matter because they can actually alter people’s conception of their own self-interest.”  (p. vii)

and

“This  led me to the idea that so long as something about the economy is believed by a large enough group of people, then because they believe it, it becomes true.” (p. viii)

Thus people believe that the economic stimulus package didn’t work (even though it may have worked, but not as much as expected, or it was poorly managed or designed).

People believe that we are being overwhelmed by government spending and debt (although the spending is for social security, medicare, medicaid and war, mainly; and the debt is mainly from the fall in government income because of the economic recession).

What if these beliefs lead us to cut spending (not that likely) and cut taxes (more likely), and nothing happens to the economy, or worse, the economy declines, because of the minimal impact of both measures.

We are truly living in interesting times and we will see a great experiment.

Filed under Economy

The Republican Favor Deficit Financing (Is Marco Rubio a Keynesian?)

November 3, 2010 Leave a comment

Some economics of the election.  Republican favor extending the Bush tax cut.  That will cause a large increase in the deficit (because the tax cut was approved to end now so the cost of reducing the taxes again is not included in the current government accounting–that was the original game).

The first item in Marco Rubio’s list of priorities is to extend the tax cut.  I would call him a Keynesian,  because the policy stimulates spending (somewhat and inefficiently) by increasing the deficit (that means more government borrowing).

Filed under Economy

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