Tag: Boomergeddon
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Boomergeddon Watch: Detroit
Defenders of the leviathan state were getting so hopeful. The U.S. budget deficit is well below $1 trillion a year, the economy is still growing, the health care cost curve shows signs of bending and even California has a balanced budget. Things may not be great right now, but they’re mending. All that talk about…
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Haven’t We Seen this Show Before?
Item One, from WSJ article, “Bernanke Affirms Bond Buying” (my emphasis): “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke came down firmly in favor of continuing the central bank’s bond-buying programs, even as he acknowledged concerns that the efforts might encourage risk-taking that could someday destabilize markets or the economy.” Item Two, from WSJ article, “Builders Fuel Home…
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Your Health Care System on the Government Needle
From the power-corrupts-and-absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely department in today’s Wall Street Journal: An extraneous and last-minute provision inserted in the New Year’s Day fiscal-cliff legislation sharply cut Medicare payments for Elekta AB, a Swedish maker of radiation tools used to battle brain tumors. Turns out that Elekta competitor Varian Medical Systems, of Palo Alto, Calif., had persuaded Senate Majority…
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Medicaid Madness
State bean counters have revised their estimates for what it would cost to expand the state Medicaid program under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The good news is that Virginia actually would save money, thanks to federal reimbursements and other provisions in Obamacare, through 2019. And when it does start costing the state,…
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The Fiscal Cliff Is Dead! Long Live the Fiscal Canyon!
by James A. Bacon Rejoice! The fiscal cliff has been averted. Fret! There is more political turmoil to come as Washington mud wrestles with sequestration spending cuts and the cap on federal borrowing in the next two months. Despair! Washington’s inability to enact serious budget reform means that Boomergeddon, once only a strong probability, is…
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Laughing in the Face of the Fiscal Cliff
Jim Bacon chats with Scott Lee about the “fiscal cliff” on Bearingdrift’s Score Radio Network. Cheer up, things could always be worse. Iran could get nuclear weapons. Space aliens could invade California. Madonna could announce another world tour. But that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else that would exceed the fiscal cliff for…
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Medicaid, the New Middle-Class Entitlement
by James A. Bacon The Medicaid program was enacted in 1965 to provide a medical safety net for low-income families and for destitute elderly who had exhausted their personal resources. It has morphed into an entitlement to preserve middle-class standards of living. The reasons are understandable. You’d have to have heart of stone not to…
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Red State, Blue State, Old State, New State
by James A. Bacon The American people have chosen four more years of partisan gridlock in Washington. There is a remote chance that President Obama and a Republican-dominated House of Representatives will reach a grand compromise to put the country back onto a fiscally sustainable path, but I’m not holding my breath. I foresee four…
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Repeat after Me: A Smaller Increase in Defense Spending Is Not a “Cut” in Defense Spending.
Defense cuts may have less impact on Virginia’s economy than many commentators, including myself, have feared. Much ado has been made of what “sequestration” — automatic spending cuts imposed upon the defense budget if Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on any other form of debt reduction — will have upon the Old Dominion’s defense-dependent economy.…
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Boomergeddon Watch: The Ring of Fire
Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager, has published a jeremiad that makes my “Boomergeddon” thesis look Pollyanna-ish by comparison. To avoid an economic meltdown, says the money mogul, the United States needs to close its fiscal gap by $1.6 trillion, equivalent to 11% of the GDP. In my book, I…
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Faltering Innovation and America’s Grim Economic Future
A confluence of trends will reduce economic growth in the United States to half — or less — of the rate that has prevailed for the past 150 years, argues Robert J. Gordon, an economics professor at Northwestern University in a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Is U.S. Economic Growth…
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Boomergeddon in Virginia: Yes, It Can Happen Here, Too
Over the past five “Boomergeddon in Virginia” posts, I have systematically laid out the findings of the “Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force” as they pertain to the Old Dominion. It’s a dismal picture. The tax base is eroding. Medicaid spending it out of control. Cutbacks in federal spending will slam both Virginia’s…
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Boomergeddon in Virginia: Retirement Benefits
When the editorial writers and talking heads speak of the looming retirement crisis in state government, they usually are referring to massive unfunded pension liabilities. This is a major concern and should by no means be underestimated. But the problem is actually bigger than pensions. Most of the 50 states have what’s known in actuary…
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Boomergeddon in Virginia: Federal Cutbacks
If there’s one thing that pundits of all ideological stripes agree upon, it’s that the federal government cannot continue running $1 trillion-a-year deficits without inducing a Boomergeddon-style fiscal and economic melt-down. The only question worth asking is how we avoid the worst-case scenario: through spending cuts, tax increases or a combination of the two. (It…
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Boomergeddon in Virginia: Medicaid Spending
Budget analysts have warned for years that state Medicaid spending eventually would grow so big that it would crowd out other budget priorities such as K-12 education. They don’t need to sound the warning anymore. That day is here. Unfortunately, the crowding out will get worse. As the authors of the “Report of the State…