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Does this mean we’ll have an Americavision Song contest?

July 27th, 2009

The presentation I gave last week to the Humphrey scholars gives support to Sumner’s call for an American Union. Didn’t “State” used to mean something like nation anyway?

Here’s the presentation I gave. Subtext: immigration is good!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Misc.

8 Responses to “Does this mean we’ll have an Americavision Song contest?”

  1. swong Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    you’re going to put ’someone’s eye’s out with them apo’strophe’s

  2. pushmedia1 Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

    suppose so

  3. piero.sraffa Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

    I think there is an issue with slide 4.

    Federal government outlays are between 15-20% for most of the postwar period, but you have them below 10% after about 1970. Are you measuring something else?

    http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0

    If anything, it proves your point better this way, but just to check. I though total government spending was about 30-35% now including fed and localities.

  4. piero.sraffa Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 8:40 pm

    Also, what is the mechanism for remittances to be better than aid? Federal government sends money, corrupt official gives it to a family member.

    I assume that’s much worse than immigrants goes to the US, gives it to family member?

    Not to justify corruption, but I don’t see that remittances will behave much differently. Of course, remittances don’t require taxes, which is a plus.

  5. pushmedia1 Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    These are the BEA NIPA so they’re final goods, not transfers. I don’t understand why people put total government expenditures over GDP. The statistic I report gives a better sense of how important the government is in the economy. Its about 1/5 of the economy. Thought experiment: imagine a government that had a 100% “tax”, collected the money, paid themselves and just reimbursed people proportionate to their incomes. Is that government much more important in the economy than one that had 0% tax?

    I make no normative claims about remittances. Evidently, they are important. There has been a couple papers, OTOH, that claim remittances are better targeted than official aid, especially during natural disasters.

  6. TheMoneyIllusion » The American Union; or how a right-winger learned to stop worrying and love the EU. Says:
    August 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    [...] 8/1/09:  Ambrosini has an interesting take on this issue.  He mentions that Connecticut would rank third on the HDI.  No mention of NH.  [...]

  7. Thorstein Veblen Says:
    August 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    Tax data look fishy… Says US capital taxes are over 40%… Is that the highest corporate bracket? I’m in the 0% LT capital gains bracket, which is why I ask… And I think Goldman Sachs paid something like 6% tax on their corporate profits last year, if memory serves…

    Also, how does Wyoming rate in median income?

  8. pushmedia1 Says:
    August 1st, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    corporate tax != capital tax

    I think I grabbed these data from stateminder, but median data are available at ipums.