More than 75 years since the system was created, unemployment insurance is still a contentious issue. Whether the problem is a lack of available work or the resistance of the unemployed to seek new work, the unemployment system itself seems to be failing to do its job. However, we could speed the re-employment of the unemployed by using staffing agencies to match people with available positions.
The U.S. government faces severe fiscal challenges due to trillion dollar annual budget deficits and mounting public debt. But the liabilities are much larger than the public debt, due to commitments the government has made to federal employees, to veterans and to seniors. In addition, it has made explicit and implicit commitments to current workers and retirees through the Social Security and Medicare programs.
Entitlement reform has dominated the ongoing debate over reducing the federal government’s persistent deficits and mounting debt. Together Medicare and Social Security account for a third of current federal spending and will continue to grow as a share of both the economy and federal spending in coming years.
In a recent Iowa speech a heckler yelled at former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to raise corporate taxes. Romney replied, ‘Corporations are people, my friend.’ He quickly clarified that statement to indicate that corporations are people because they are owned by people and that when you tax corporations you are taxing people — people who own corporations.
There is general agreement the financial crisis that began with the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, was worsened by the bursting of the U.S. housing price bubble. It is also generally acknowledged that some of the fuel for the housing bubble came from a relaxation of mortgage loan standards that allowed many families to purchase homes they could not afford with loans on which they subsequently defaulted.
The production of electricity from renewable energy technologies is growing much faster than the electric power supply as a whole, and solar power is among the fastest growing segments of the renewable energy market. Public policy concerns and economics are driving this growth. Some analysts and politicians believe that increasing solar power use will enhance U.S. national security by reducing dependence on imported energy — primarily oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia.
This year Medicare will spend more than $530 billion. Beneficiaries will pay for about 20 percent of spending through premiums and income tax payments. Workers will pay the remaining 80 percent through payroll and income taxes. In return for transferring their income to retirees, workers expect to receive health care benefits when they retire or if they become disabled.
Today, the production, delivery and use of electric power are undergoing revolutionary changes not seen since the era of Thomas Edison. These developments promise to be as profound as those that transformed the 1960s-era standard black rotary-dial telephone into today’s broadband-access mobile phone.
Excise taxes are fees levied on specific products like cigarettes, beer and gasoline. Unlike broad-based taxes, such as general sales or income taxes, excises are often paid by a narrow subset of the population, such as smokers, consumers of alcohol and so forth. These taxes are often hidden from consumers because they are embedded in a product's retail price. Some excise taxes are called "sin" taxes because they are levied on undesirable behaviors such as smoking and drinking.
The new federal health care law – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or ACA) – uses cuts in Medicare to fund additional federal health care spending on nonseniors. The cuts come from reducing the growth in physicians' Medicare reimbursements using the existing sustainable growth rate (SGR) system and reducing future Medicare payment updates for hospitals and other nonphysician services by the economy-wide increase in productivity.
Investors breathed a tentative sigh of relief in recent months as they watched their retirement accounts make up for lost ground. Just a few months earlier, as they watched their 401(k)s weather dramatic stock market swings, many may have wished they were covered by a defined benefit pension plan from their employer (or union).
Proponents of health information technology (HIT) often claim that the United States lags behind other developed countries when it comes to the use of electronic medical records (EMRs), physician order entry systems and personal health records in clinics and hospitals. For example, only about 17 percent of doctors and 8 percent to 10 percent of U.S. hospitals use EMRs.
In 2008 Chile initiated a major reform to its personal account social security system. The personal account system, established in 1981, replaced a traditional pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) system in which workers paid taxes that financed the benefits of those who had already retired – similar to Social Security in the United States.
Health Care Studies from the NCPA break new ground on policy issues that include health care reform, medical malpractice, Medicare, Medicaid and telemedicine. These studies may combine several elements of …
The human population is growing – especially in countries where people are already malnourished – and will probably plateau sometime this century between eight and nine billion people. With approximately six million square miles of land under cultivation, the world currently produces more than enough food to feed Earth's six billion people minimally adequate diets. However, as populations grow and developing countries strive for Western living standards, the world will need approximately three times more food than is currently produced.
Many people are concerned that an increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – due primarily to such human activities as burning fossil fuels for energy – is causing the Earth to warm, with potentially harmful results. In response, many developed countries agreed to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, committing them to limit and eventually reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The United States chose not to participate, in part because the agreement exempts such developing countries as China and India, although they have the world's fastest-growing economies and emissions.
Lack of health insurance is a significant, persistent problem in New Jersey. In 2007, more than 1.3 million residents were uninsured – three-fourths were working-age adults 19 to 64 years old. About 15.6 percent of New Jersey residents are uninsured, which is close to the national average, and the U.S. Census Bureau recently ranked New Jersey 34th among states in the percentage of residents with insurance coverage.
The Obama administration is committed to using federal spending over the next few years in hopes of turning the economy around. It will be funded by continuous, massive budget deficits. Will deficit spending bring about economic recovery? Will a return to Keynesian economic policy bring us economic prosperity?
Global warming is a reality. But whether it is a serious problem – and whether emis- sions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases from human fossil fuel use are the principal cause – are uncertain. The current debate over the U. S. response to climate change centers on greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies, which are likely to impose substantially higher costs to society than global warming might.
Personal retirement accounts are a valuable tool in building a retirement nest egg. The recent fall in the stock market has caused some savers to cash out their savings. This is unfortunate because the stock market has rebounded after every fall, and those who are not in the market at the bottom will lose out as it rises. There are other practices that can derail even the best laid retirement plans. This study addresses 10 of them.
The well-documented rise in economic inequality in the United States over the last two decades is somewhat misleading. Almost all Americans, whether considered "rich" or "poor," are better off economically today than in previous times. Furthermore, due to the high degree of income mobility in the United States, most people move between income groups throughout their life.
One of the biggest problems in health care reform is that parties with different viewpoints do not agree on basic facts. Some view the private sector as the source of U.S. health care woes and an expansion of government control as the solution. Others believe that ill-considered government interference is the main source of the problem.
Does it pay to work more hours in order to earn more income? The answer depends on what one earns after taxes. Virtually all American households are confronted with high to very high marginal tax rates when they increase the number of hours they work in the current year or in future years.
One of government's biggest challenges is to develop policies that raise the standard of living in a society without creating large income gaps between the rich and poor. But to a great extent, raising living standards and redistributing income are mutually exclusive goals.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Fourth Assessment Report. The report included predictions of big increases in average world temperatures by 2100, resulting in an increasingly rapid loss of the world's glaciers and ice caps, a dramatic global sea level rise that would threaten low-lying coastal areas, the spread of tropical diseases, and severe drought and floods.