Friday, July 2, 2010

PS427: Two Budget Analysis Sites

Here are two sites that do interesting budget analysis work.

Leaning left is the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  We took a look at some of their work earlier.

And leaning right/libertarian is the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Both have a variety of interesting analyses, and it is useful to compare how and why their conclusions sometimes differ (and where they agree.)

2 comments:

  1. These two sites are interesting because it seems as though they strongly agree on one major idea, that decreased jobs in the private sector is dwarfing the growth of the nation. They both agree that we need more jobs in the private sector to get people back into the workforce and lower the unemployment rate.

    What they largely disagree on is how to reduce the large national deficit. The leftists from the first site believe that increased spending will stimulate economic growth. They think that reduced spending by unemployed workers is a drag on the economic recovery. On the other side, the rightists from the second website suggests that spending is growing too quickly and that increased spending rather than insufficient revenue is the key to our deficit problem.

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  2. It’s interesting that the first article I look at on the “leftist” site was an article saying that tax cuts for those making over $250,000 ending will actually be very beneficial for the economy. They quote CBO as saying that actually cutting taxes for higher paid households has very little effectiveness in terms of stimulus. Also noting that there would not be increased spending even if the tax cuts were extended especially in terms of small businesses. I can’t help but think what some conservatives would have to say if they read this. Mind you I’m thinking of the in terms of the stereotypical conservative that thinks that liberals are simply trying to take their money. Although I did manage to find an article on the “rightest” site that said taxes must be raised for all individuals. So perhaps they agree on this issue in this time of desperate need.

    After further investigation of the sites I was trying to find an article that they agreed on a found that there were similar articles concerning where the deficit in future years truly originated. Was it within the Bush administration or is the stimulus and projected spending from the Obama administration leading further in the wrong direction. While both the left and right made note at how Bush brought about some deficit the right sight was focusing on how the increase in deficit could drawn back to current issues. While the left says, “Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years”.

    I believe it’s expected that if each site does lean a certain political poll that there would be differences in explanations. While both can agree on what is wrong and also on some possible ways to fix the current deficit, they disagree on how we came to be here.

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