Red States, Blue States and the Distribution of Federal Spending

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           April 1 is Census Day.  Evidently Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann have been encouraging Americans to boycott the census — to refuse to fill out the whole form.   This protest follows from their small government ideology.

           I am not always sure what they, or Republicans, or Tea Party participants mean by small government.  They say they want a government that intervenes less in the economic sphere.   Perhaps they don’t like the idea that the census numbers are used, among other things, to determine the allocation of federal spending across states, because they don’t think it is the business of the government to redistribute income.  That is “socialism.”    Even “Stalinism.” read more

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The Copenhagen Accord on Climate Change: Countries Submit 2020 Emission Goals

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Most observers judged as a failure the December meeting in Copenhagen of the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).    But then the usual way of judging such meetings is to look for a communiqué that voices sweeping aspirations, such as the G-7 “decision” at L’Aquila last summer to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade.   In reality, without any evidence of countries agreeing what is each one’s share of the burden, such proclamations are worthless.  Better tiny steps on the ground than giant flights of rhetoric. read more

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Let Greece Go to the IMF

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The members of the eurozone and the EU have apparently decided that they must heroically rescue Greece, that this is better than having the IMF do it.   Senior figures in Brussels feel that the latter alternative is unthinkable.   I am a little confused about why.   Martin Wolf writes in the Financial Times this week that to bring in the Fund  “would demonstrate that this is not a true union at all.”    But the EU and EMU and not true fiscal unions.  If the citizens of Germany and other more successful countries were willing to bail out the Greeks, then fine;  the EMU would be ready to be a fiscal union.  But they are not; so it is not.   Given that reality, what is wrong with something that “demonstrates” it? read more

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