-Caveat Lector-
CLINTON'S ASTOUNDING BUDGET
Advocates of limited government and restrained government
spending are reeling at the vastness of President Clinton's
proposed fiscal year 2000 budget. With the single exception of
1944 during World War II, never in the history of the U.S. would
the federal government grab a greater share of the nation's gross
domestic product.
o Clinton's budget calls for Washington to seize 20.7
percent of the nation's productive output.
o In 1944, the take was 20.9 percent -- and that fell the
following year to 20.4 percent of gross domestic product
(GDP).
o At the height of the Korean War in 1952, the federal share
was 19 percent; and in both 1969, during the Vietnam War,
and in the Cold War era of 1981, the stake was 19.7
percent.
o Moreover, proposed changes in the tax laws would result in
a five-year net tax increase of $45.8 billion.-- as some
tax increases totaling $82 billion would be offset by a
few tax breaks aimed at favored constituencies.
Critics deplore the tax-bracket creep that is the result of
prosperity. As incomes rise, taxpayers are steadily pushed
upward into steeply progressive tax rates.
Meanwhile, federal spending increases. Budget experts at the
Cato Institute have identified nearly $150 billion in new
spending during the next five years. With inflation running
below 1 percent in 1998, the budget projects hefty increases of
more than 4 percent during both 2000 and 2001 for domestic
discretionary spending.
Sources: Editorial, "The Lewinsky Budget," Wall Street Journal;
and editorial, "Tax and Spend, Tax and Spend," Washington Times,
both February 2, 1999.
For more on the Budget for 2000
http://www.ncpa.org/pd/budget/budget.htm
THE DARK SIDE OF THE GOOD NEWS
The U.S. is awash in good news: crime is down, welfare rolls are
plunging, employment rates are high and births among teenagers
are declining.
But American Enterprise Institute analyst Charles Murray has been
taking a look at the state of America's underclasses. He uses
three indicators to examine the condition of those at the bottom
of the socioeconomic ladder -- criminality, young male dropouts
from the labor force and out-of-wedlock births among young women.
Here is a brief description of what he found:
o Crime is down because so many of the chronically criminal
are locked up -- as demonstrated by the fact that if we
were to imprison people in 1997 at the same rate we did in
1980, when crime hit an all-time high, there would have
been about 1.3 million fewer inmates.
o Among 16- to 24-year-old black males who are not in
school, the proportion who are not working or looking for
work has risen from an average 17 percent during the 1980s
to 20 percent in 1992, then to 23 percent in 1997.
o While headlines have trumpeted the fall in out-of-wedlock
births per 1,000 unmarried women, the illegitimacy ratio
-- that is, the percentage of babies who are born to
unmarried women -- has been flat since 1994, at 32
percent.
Murray suggests that there may be a downside to the shift of
single mothers from welfare to work. No body of research exists
to demonstrate that it is good for children when a single mother
works, he points out.
"Can the U.S. retain its political and social culture," Murray
asks, "in the presence of a permanent underclass?" His answer is
yes, if it is "sufficiently small." If it is large, he believes,
the answer is no.
He points out that underclass ethics -- among all races -- are
deteriorating and contributing to a coarsening of American life.
Source: Charles Murray (American Enterprise Institute), "And Now
for the Bad News," Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1999.
For more on Out-of-Wedlock Births
http://www.ncpa.org/pd/social/social5.html
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