California has apparently “fixed” its budget deficit, but at what cost? One of the fallouts from the unfolding budget crises in cities and states has of course been cuts to social programs. But the scale of those cuts often gets masked by the noise of political fighting. One could be forgiven for not being able…
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It’s Official: Austerity Economics Doesn’t Work : The New Yorker
The sheen is starting to fade from the idea of austerity, and the U.K. is explicitly admitting as much. Cassidy claims that the U.S. has served as a “control” case, with the Obama Administration pursuing a Keynesian approach to Britain’s neoliberal one. I think that’s a debatable characterization of what the U.S. federal government has…
Los Angeles: doing less with less
The deep local budget cuts made over the past few years are starting to take a toll on local services, although . Los Angeles fire chief was called to the carpet to explain slow response times in Los Angeles (only 61% of emergency calls meet national standards for response times), and he put the issue…
NYT series on subsidies, part 2 (Texas)
The New York Times is running part two of its series on state and local corporate welfare. Today’s piece focuses on Texas, the biggest grantor of such subsidies, and a state at the forefront of both radical cuts to education spending and aggressive state tax cuts that have left both the state and local budgets…
Economic development, or blackmail?
The New York Times is running a terrific series on tax breaks and other subsidies given by governments, especially local and state governments, to corporations that promise jobs and revenue, despite the patent failure of such subsidies to improve the economic situation of communities. This first part of the series features GM, among other companies,…