Posts Tagged costs

I Just Don’t Understand

There are a lot of positions conservatives take that I understand, although I disagree with them. There are sincere anti-abortion people who believe life begins at conception, for example. Belief in “fiscal responsibility” leads many people to draw (bad) analogies to household budgets and disputes over what sorts of behaviors actually are fiscally responsible. I [...]

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The Shadow Government

A fair amount of my academic research has addressed issues of government privatization–or more accurately, contracting out. (Privatization, as Morton Marcus frequently notes, is what Margaret Thatcher did in England: selling off government enterprises to private sector owners. In the US, privatization means providing government services through for-profit or nonprofit contractors–a very different thing.) My [...]

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Death and Taxes

These days, those of us who follow policy debates are suffering from overload: same-sex marriage, immigration policy, foreign policy—not to mention the re-emergence of pocketbook issues like collective bargaining rights—are generating lots of heat, if distressingly little light. And then, of course, there are the perennial complaints about taxes. Everyone, it seems, wants government to [...]

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Factoids to Ponder…..

As we prepare to lay off teachers, deal a body blow to Planned Parenthood’s ability to provide health care for poor women, further eviscerate civics education, etc., etc., etc.–a few things to ponder (h/t to Greg Kueterman): A Tomahawk missile cost 569,000 in FY99 Factoring in inflation, they probably cost 736,000 =/- today The U.S. [...]

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The Economics of Healthcare Reform

It’s getting so I hate to turn on the television, unless I’m watching something I have TIVO’d, and can zip through the commercials. On live TV, there is an ad that runs every few minutes declaring that healthcare reform will add to the national deficit and raise taxes. The ad ends by darkly warning that [...]

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