Seems like this is an appropriate day for this lesson about tax policy.

The last thirty seconds of the three-minute video actually contain some very good economics, roughly akin to this classic cartoon. Yes, incentives matter.

Speaking of cartoons, here’s one with a Halloween theme.

And since it is Halloween and everyone is thinking about candy, these two parodies of The Candyman song (here and here) are rather appropriate.

Over at Downsizing the Federal Government, we focused on the following issues this past week:

• Federal infrastructure spending has a long and painful history of pork-barrel politics and bureaucratic bungling, with money often going to wasteful and environmentally damaging projects.
• Chris Edwards responds to critics of his critique of federal infrastructure spending.
• Mark Calabria thinks President Obama’s new mortgage plan should be held under water.
• My thoughts on the spending reforms proposed by Rick Perry.
• The president’s student loan plan: borrowers won’t get much relief, and taxpayers will get saddled with additional costs.
• The State Department spreads democracy—and money.

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A friend points me to a recent article on Foreign Policy’s website written by a career State Department employee who spent a year in Iraq trying to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. I’ve pretty much become numb to stories about government failure, but this one left me with my forehead planted on my desk.

Here are some of the ideas that government officials actually gave the green light to, using your tax dollars:

• French pastry classes for Iraqi women.
• A play about a town’s dispute over “the value of shade cast by a donkey.”
• A road constructed to facilitate commerce was instead used by insurgents to carry out attacks.
• A local artist was paid to paint a mural of “oiled, homoerotic Steve Reeves musclemen” on the wall of a gym.
• Bicycles were bought for impoverished children in a Baghdad neighborhood. However, the roads were too damaged and dangerous for the kids to ride their bikes, so the bike wheels ended up being used on wheelchairs for injured Iraqis.
• The creation of a Baghdad Yellow Pages even though only 250 businesses with permanent landlines could be found.

I suspect that some readers will respond that the federal government should instead be using taxpayer dollars to build roads and fund the arts here in the United States. However, as we demonstrate over and over again at Down​siz​ing​Gov​ern​ment​.org, the federal government does a lousy job of spending other people’s money at home or abroad—period.

Professor Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University has a must-read column in today’s Wall Street Journal, beginning with what should be an obvious statement.

Those who heaped high praise on Keynesian policies have grown silent as government spending has failed to bring an economic recovery. Except for a few diehards who want still more government spending, and those who make the unverifiable claim that the economy would have collapsed without it, most now recognize that more than a trillion dollars of spending by the Bush and Obama administrations has left the economy in a slump and unemployment hovering above 9%.

He then asks a rather important question.

Why is the economic response to increased government spending so different from the response predicted by Keynesian models?

Prof. Meltzer gives four reasons, beginning with the threat of higher taxes.

First, big increases in spending and government deficits raise the prospect of future tax increases. Many people understand that increased spending must be paid for sooner or later. Meanwhile, President Obama makes certain that many more will reach that conclusion by continuing to demand permanent tax increases. His demands are a deterrent for those who do most of the saving and investing.

I especially like how he highlights Obama’s actions, which clearly show the link between more spending and more taxes. I also would have added the European fiscal crisis, which has made more people aware of the negative long-run consequences of excessive government.

He then lists the negative impact of having the government distort the allocation of resources, a point that is music to my ears.

Second, most of the government spending programs redistribute income from workers to the unemployed. This, Keynesians argue, increases the welfare of many hurt by the recession. What their models ignore, however, is the reduced productivity that follows a shift of resources toward redistribution and away from productive investment.

He then discusses the impact of red tape, a point which I’ve never addressed, but obviously is very important if politicians use Keynesian spending as an excuse for expanding the scope of government as well as the size of government.

Third, Keynesian models totally ignore the negative effects of the stream of costly new regulations that pour out of the Obama bureaucracy. Who can guess the size of the cost increases required by these programs? ObamaCare is not the only source of this uncertainty, though it makes a large contribution.

Prof. Meltzer then dings the short-term mentality of Keynesians.

Fourth, U.S. fiscal and monetary policies are mainly directed at getting a near-term result. The estimated cost of new jobs in President Obama’s latest jobs bill is at least $200,000 per job, based on administration estimates of the number of jobs and their cost. How can that appeal to the taxpayers who will pay those costs? Once the subsidies end, the jobs disappear—but the bonds that financed them remain and must be serviced. These medium and long-term effects are ignored in Keynesian models.

The only thing I would change about this argument is that he also could have explained that so-called stimulus spending actually destroys jobs, on net, when you consider the loss of private-sector jobs that takes place when government diverts resources from the productive sector of the economy.

A minor oversight, though, in a blistering indictment of Keynesian economics. Heck, Prof. Meltzer should have taken my place at the NYC debate on stimulus. I suspect, however, that the crowd would have been reached the wrong conclusion even if the ghosts of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek has been resuscitated for the event (yes, I’m still sulking).

In addition to explaining why Keynesian economics does not work, Prof. Meltzer also outlines the policies that should be implemented.

Clearly, a more effective economic policy would aim at restoring the long-term growth rate by reducing uncertainty and restoring investor and consumer confidence. Here are four proposals to help get us there: First, Congress and the administration should agree on a 10-year program of government spending cuts to reduce the deficit. The Ryan and Simpson-Bowles budget proposals are a constructive start. (Note to Republican presidential candidates: Permanent tax reduction can only be achieved by reducing government spending.) Second, reduce corporate tax rates and expense capital investment by closing loopholes. Third, announce a five-year moratorium on new regulations. Fourth, adopt an enforceable 0%-2% inflation target to allay fears of future high inflation.

These are all good ideas, though I would have written that we need a “10-year program of government spending cuts” rather than saying we need “10-year program of government spending cuts to reduce the deficit.”

After all, the federal government is too big and the damage to the economy would still exist even if the deficit disappeared because $1 trillion of new revenue magically floated down from heaven.

The problem is spending. That’s the fiscal disease facing America. Deficits and debt are just symptoms of that disease.

Texas governor Rick Perry’s “Cut, Balance, and Grow” plan is out. Dan Mitchell discussed Perry’s proposed tax reforms so I’ll offer my take on the proposed spending reforms:

• Perry says he wants to “preserve Social Security for all generations of Americans” but state and local government employees would be allowed to opt-out of the program. Perry says that younger Americans would be able to “contribute a portion of their earnings” to a personal retirement account. I’d like to be able to completely opt-op without having to work in government. I suspect that other younger Americans who recognize that Social Security is a lousy deal will feel the same.

• Other proposed reforms to Social Security include raising the retirement age, changing the indexing formula, and ending the practice of using excess Social Security revenues to fund general government activities. Proposing to put an end to “raiding” the Social Security trust fund might be a good sound bite for the campaign trail, but excess Social Security revenues will soon be a thing of the past anyhow. Bizarrely, Perry cites the Highway Trust Fund as “the model for how to protect funds in a pay-as-you-go system from being used for unrelated purposes.” As a Cato essay on federal highway financing explains, only about 60 percent of highway trust fund money is actually spent on highways. The rest is spent on non-highway uses like transit and bicycle paths. The bottom line is that the federal budget’s so-called “trust funds” generally belong in the same category as Santa Claus and the Toothy Fairy. Perry should just stick with calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

• As for Medicare, Perry says reform options would include raising the retirement age, adjusting benefits, and giving Medicare recipients more control over how they spend the money they receive from current taxpayers. No surprises there.

• I’m a little confused by Perry’s language on Medicaid reform. On one hand, he says that the 1996 welfare reform law should be used as the model. The 1996 welfare reform law block granted a fixed amount of federal funds for each state. On the other hand, Perry says “Instead of the federal government confiscating money from states, taking a cut off the top, and then sending the money back out with limited flexibility for how states can actually use it, individual states should control the program’s funding and requirements from the very beginning.” I believe that the states, and not the federal government, should be responsible for funding low-income health care programs (if they choose to offer such programs). However, I don’t think that’s what Perry is actually proposing.

• Perry calls for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and a cap on total federal spending equal to 18 percent of GDP. Federal spending will be about 24 percent of GDP this year. What agencies and programs would Perry cut or eliminate to reduce federal spending by 6 percent of GDP? He doesn’t really say. That leaves me to conclude that he embraces a BBA for the same reason that most Republicans embrace it: he wants to avoid getting specific about what programs he’d cut. One could argue that his entitlement reforms are sufficiently specific, but compared to Ron Paul’s plan, which calls for the elimination of five federal departments, Perry’s plan leaves too much guesswork.

• Other spending reform proposals don’t make up for the lack of specifics on spending cuts. For example, Perry proposes to eliminate earmarks. That’s already happened. He says he’d cut non-defense discretionary spending by $100 billion, but that’s a relatively small sum and letting military spending off the hook is disappointing. Proposing to “require emergency spending to be spent only on emergencies” sounds nice but would a President Perry stick to it if Congress larded up “emergency” legislation for a natural disaster in Texas or some military adventure abroad?

In sum, there’s some okay stuff here, but I don’t think it’s anything those who desire a truly limited federal government can get excited about. That said, Perry could have done a lot worse.

Suddenly, student loans are nearing the top of the nation’s public policy debate. Indeed, President Obama is expected to make a big speech about them on Wednesday. Why the sudden ascendance? Probably because the burden of student loans is one of the few things OWSers are clearly angry about, and that has raised questions ranging from whether such loans should be dischargable in bankruptcy, to whether they help fuel the Saturn V rocket of college price inflation. And last Sunday GOP presidential contender Ron Paul jumped into the fray, suggesting we eliminate the federal student loan program entirely.

Paul is right about phasing out federal student loans. Unfortunately, that’s likely the last thing President Obama will propose.

The first reaction to hearing such a proposal is that it’s Grinch-level heartlessness, stealing a better future from low-income kids. That is almost certainly what the president would say, and such a reaction would likely poll well. That’s why he’s expected to propose lowering interest rates, easing repayment, and other borrower-friendly measures. But as I lay out in a Cato Policy Analysis to be released imminently, by most indications federal student aid and other taxpayer-fueled subsidies aren’t good for anyone. (Well, anyone not employed by a college or university, the ultimate receiving end of all the forced largesse). By artificially—and hugely—boosting consumption, they ultimately lead to massive tuition inflation, encourage millions of unprepared people to take on studies they never finish, and pour H2O into already watered-down degrees. In other words, student aid—including federal lending—is likely a net loss to both students and society.

But I’ve already said too much. If you want to get a lot more on this—and more on the many unintended evils of federal college policies—stand by for the release of my study. And if you’re in DC, come to Capitol Hill Thursday for a briefing on the subject with me and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R‑NC). It should give OWSers, libertarians, conservatives, liberals, and anyone else lots to think about.

Neal McCluskey gutted the President’s new “Save the Teachers” American Jobs Act sales pitch a good while back, as did Andrew Coulson here. Thankfully, it seems a lot of senators agree it’s a bad idea.

Last week, a $35 Billion piece of the president’s new “stimulus” plan, which included $30 Billion to bail out government schools—again—went down in the Senate:

Our public education problem is huge; we’re spending far too much and getting way too little. But most people don’t know the basic details. They still think we need to spend more on education.

So, for all of you who want to get the details but don’t have much time, or have family and friends who need to be introduced to reality, I present to you … Everything you need to know about public school spending in less than 2½ minutes.

Watch it, “like” it, post it on Facebook, email it around, comment, and generally get the word out … because we really do need to get the word out.