socialist-economics

The $119 Billion Spent on Food Stamps Last Year Was 1.9 Percent of Federal Spending, but You All Knew That, Right? via Patreon   The $119 Billion Spent on Food Stamps Last Year Was 1.9 Percent of Federal Spending, but You All Knew That, Right? In a lengthy piece  on Republican proposals for cutting the food stamp program, the Washington Post found room to tell us that we spent $119 billion on the food stamps last year. It did not find any room to put this figure in a context that might make it meaningful to its readers. Yeah, $119 billion is a lot of money, more than almost anyone other than Elon Musk (pre-Twitter) will ever see, but is it a big deal for the federal government? We can debate what is “big” or “small,” but the federal government spent $6,272 billion last year, which means that food stamp program accounted for a bit less than 1.9 percent of total spending. If the Republicans cut the program by 20 percent, which would be a large cut, it would reduce federal spendi...

  via Project Syndicate , Jan 26, 202 A careful look at US economic conditions supports the view that inflation was driven mainly by supply-side disruptions and shifts in the pattern of demand. Given this, further interest-rate hikes will have little to no effect – and will cause far-reaching problems of their own. NEW YORK – Despite favorable indices, it is too soon to tell whether inflation has been tamed. Nonetheless, two clear lessons have emerged from the recent price surge. First, economists’ standard models – especially the dominant one that assumes the economy always to be in equilibrium – were effectively useless. And, second, those who confidently asserted that it would take five years of pain to wring inflation out of the system have already been refuted. Inflation has fallen dramatically, with the December 2022 seasonally adjusted consumer price index coming in just 1% above that for June. There is overwhelming evidence that the main source of inflation was pandemic-r...