Congress, Politics

“Statistically Indistinguishable from Zero”: Wharton Study Finds the Inflation Reduction Act Has No Impact on Inflation

The Hill was thrown into near chaos this week when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) unveiled the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans charged that Manchin misled them into supporting a $280 billion chips and science bill — a bill they would have otherwise opposed. Others criticized the name of the bill, which contains a significant number of climate change items long sought by the Democrats. Now, the respected Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the Inflation Reduction Act would actually have no impact on inflation.

Manchin premised his change on the fact that the bill would reduce inflation despite raising taxes and expenditures. The Act would combat climate change, extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies, and reduce the budget deficit by roughly $300 billion. Figures like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) admitted that much of the Build Back Better bill is now in the Act.

Jon Huntley and John Ricco found that the bill “would reduce non-interest cumulative deficits by $248 billion over the budget window with no impact on GDP in 2031. The impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

That is $52 billion less in deficit reduction than claimed by the Democrats and the review found the bill would actually “very slightly increase inflation until 2024 and decrease inflation thereafter.”

Wharton’s budget unit functions like an academic Congressional Budget Office in offering non-partisan budget analysis. At a time of growing orthodoxy and viewpoint intolerance, it remains an independent voice on budgetary issues.
For many, the Congress has become more bold in mislabeling legislation like an infrastructure bill that contained mainly non-infrastructure or “human infrastructure” provisions. Later a stripped down infrastructure bill was passed that was confined to actual infrastructure.

119 thoughts on ““Statistically Indistinguishable from Zero”: Wharton Study Finds the Inflation Reduction Act Has No Impact on Inflation”

  1. It should be named the Inflation Augmentation Act. When have you ever seen deficit spending, “not” been inflationary. The U.S.D. has already lost over 97% of it’s purchasing power. Expecting the few profitable corporations to make up the differences between revenue and spending in addition to the already large deficits, shows the lack of review of many prior policies and their results. The corporate tax cuts were meant to bring all the offshore money held by the multinationals back into the national economy. What do you think they will do now?

    1. Once upon a time, a long time ago, far far away in a distant land Paul Krugman was a decent economist. He earned a Nobel prize for work on Trade economics – work that he has completely contradicted in his political columns.

      Paul Krugman has been nothing but a shill for democrats for decades.

      He is a leading proponent of idiotic MMT – magical money theory, that has created the mess we currently are in.

      But it does not surprise me that you are a fan. That isconsistent with your rejection of reality regarding Climate.

  4. It’s the Grasshopper and the Ant.

    Profligate politicians have thrown money to the wind because it appeals to voters’ emotions. They think they’re doing something effective, but they are wrong.

    It’s easy to get people to vote for you when you promise to solve all their problems without hardship, and keep spending money. Here’s a check that will buy you one month of gas to make up for the years of unaffordable gas prices which in turn make all goods and services unaffordable. Here’s a check for help with Covid, even though your business was wiped out because it wasn’t big enough to lobby. Here’s $4,000 to help you buy a $66,000 electric vehicle, which the energy grid cannot sustain and which will be unaffordable to charge. Oh, and if you drive all day for your blue collar job, you’ll have to stop every couple of hours and charge for 45 minutes.

    When the country is on the verge of collapse, its dollar devalued, credit in the toilet, and we’ve run out of other people’s money, then it will be time for austerity measures. The ones wise enough to impose them will be castigated as mean racist homophobes transphobes xenophobes because they will withdraw money from all the pork.

  5. It spends an inordinate amount of money for little to no return.

    Like the Paris Accord.

    Like all that Covid spending on education, much of which went to DEI and transgender programs instead.

    Politicians like to shovel money at a problem for the optics, and then quietly distribute the pork. It’s a racket.

  6. Just read an article about more and more people turning to food banks.
    And food banks are running short on supplies as inflationary dollars are not going as far as they used to pre-Bidenflation.

    1. UpstateFarmer:

      I never thought I’d see the day when American babies were hungry, mothers couldn’t find baby formula, and we would rely on the kindness of Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, and other countries to send some to us. Even then, store shelves are still 30% lower than normal.

      The quality and quantity of catastrophes within only a year and a half is staggering. We’re not even halfway through Biden’s term.

  7. Changing the name of Build Back Better does not make it less toxic. The Dems really do think we are stupid.

    Where I live, temperatures are lower than last year and have dropped 15 degrees since June. Meanwhile, gas prices are still double what they were in early 2021 after the ‘savings’, and by extension everything delivered by or made of petroleum is exponentially more expensive. Even foam for couch cushions, I discovered the other day. Installing central air cost my wife and I less than $10,000 a year ago. Our guys tell us that this year it costs upward of $35,000. Our job was left unfinished, we scheduled the work twice, nobody showed up either time. Just didn’t show up. Twice.

    Our Dems seem to be intent on making nearly every American hate them with a fury Trump couldn’t have hoped to garner. I have never seen such deterioration is such a short period of time in my life. There is no way it is an accident.

    1. Our generation didn’t care enough for the environment.? Glass bottles of milk, soda and beer used to return to the store. The shop would return them back to the factory, where they were washed and sterilized before using them again and again. We really didn’t care about the environment back in the day. We even washed the baby diapers because there were no disposable ones. We dried them ourselves, not in electric dryers. Those diapers were really drying from the wind and sun.
      We really didn’t care about the state of the environment back in our day. Back in our day we only had one TV and one radio in the house, not one TV per room. And the TV had a 14 inch screen, not the size of a stadium, which when it broke, would be thrown out of nowhere. In the kitchen, we had to do everything by hand because there were no electrical appliances to do everything for us. When we mailed something fragile to pack, we used old newspapers, not nylon bubbles and styrofoam balls that take 500 years to decompose.
      Back in the day we didn’t use petrol lawn mowers to mow the lawn, they were mechanical and we used our muscles to move them. The workouts were amazing and we didn’t have to go to the gym to get fit.
      You’re right, we didn’t worry about the environment in our days. We used to drink water straight from the tap, not from the plastic bottles and cups that now fill the oceans.
      There wasn’t really a “green wave” in our days – back then we all got on the tram or bus, boys used bikes or walked to school instead of using their parents as a 24-hour taxi service.
      So isn’t it amazing that the current generation talks so much about “environment”, but is unwilling to give anything up and think to live with little like I did back in my day! Not this lot! It’s a ‘cake and eat it’ attitude born of too much have, and not enough ‘have not’, that Biden seeks to cater to.

      1. Well stated!

        Also, we didn’t generate bags full of trash from fast food or prepackaged processed food mainly because eating out was an infrequent treat.

      2. WE CREATED A HEEDLESS, NEGLIGENT MONSTER BY MAKING THEM CUSTOMERS
        _____________________________________________________________________

        “Asia, Africa Cause 90% of Plastic Pollution in World’s Oceans”

        #1. Plastic doesn’t magically appear in the ocean. It has to arrive there. How does it do that? One way is through carelessness, such as littering. Litter can end up in storm drains, then washed out to sea. But if you’re a responsible adult, and you put garbage in a trash can and recyclables in a recycling bin, everything will be okay. So, how does so much plastic get in the ocean?

        #2. You aren’t the problem. Asia is. Some of the nastiest, most polluted rivers in the world are in China and India. One study, published in October 2017 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, estimated that 88 to 95% of plastic pollution in the oceans came from just 10 rivers. Eight of them were in Asia, and the other two were in Africa.

        Why are these countries such big polluters? Well, they’re poor. They don’t have good infrastructure for dealing with waste. As countries become wealthier, they are better able to clean up their messes. This is a phenomenon known as the environmental Kuznets curve. Instead of banning plastic straws, we should be focusing our efforts on helping developing countries become wealthier and healthier.

        – The American Council on Science and Health

        https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa-cause-90-plastic-pollution-worlds-oceans-13233

  8. It has been shown over and over again that price controls do not work, In 1971, President Nixon told the nation: “I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.” After a 90‐​day freeze, increases had to be approved by a “Pay Board” and a “Price Commission.” This scheme failed. As Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw explained in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy: “Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets.” [quoted in https://www.cato.org/commentary/remembering-nixons-wage-price-controls%5D If wage and price controls worked, the Soviet Union would still be with us.

  9. Politicians can make up names and play games with terminology, but in the simplest form, economics boils down to what my father used to tell us when were were teens and young adults. “You cannot live a champaign life on a beer budget.”

    The piper will be paid. They can kick the can down the road for only a limited amount of time. What’s more, the economic hurt that Americans now feel is a direct result of this administration’s policies and lack of firm WH leadership. There used to be a funny sign in the accounting department at my university, that applies to our government, that read: “There are three kinds of accountants. Those who can count and those who can’t.”

  10. You just don’t get it.

    Or you refuse to get it.

    Americans are free.

    Free to move, free to speak, free to pursue happiness, free to accept or reject employment, free to conduct enterprise, free to operate entire industries, etc.

    Free of government, with infinitesimal exception.

    Americans are free to endeavor in the complete absence of interference or intercession by government, except by that which is enumerated in the Constitution.

    You have the Constitution confused with the Communist Manifesto.

  11. We’re going to fight inflation by printing more money. Works every time. God bless America.

    1. If Democrats want to turn the entire country red – Let them.

      It is better to have a small disaster now than a bigger one later.

  12. Not a surprise when democrats and RINOs think our Bill of Rights is intended to give them authority over the people.

  13. If democrats wish to self destruct – let them.

    We are in a recession.
    This is a stupid idea.
    I am sorry that Manchin does not realize that – but that is his perogative.

    With respect to some deal that was reniged on.
    If true – republicans will not trust democrats or Manchin in the future.

    That is the cost of backing out on deals.

    1. There’s good reason to hang onto certain old books, like I remember studying, as many of them showed economic collapses as Depression instead of calling them Recession.

      As I recall the name change came after the Central Bankers took back control of the US Govt/People in 1913. Ph Wilson!

      **************
      I haven’t read it yet, but I’m buying it…… Alex Jones Has a new book out now, I believe it will be later considered source material.

      I’ll likely repost this tomorrow….. And damn few will watch this below:

      https://www.banned.video/watch?id=62e5876329060f37494e5efe

        1. More of the idiocy form the left.

          This is the anomally as of Dec 2017, which I am providing only to demonstrate that UAH is not an outlier

          AIRS: +0.24
          GISTEMP: +0.22
          ECMWF: +0.20
          Cowtan & Way: +0.19
          UAH LT: +0.18
          HadCRUT4: +0.17

          The discrepancy between UAH and RSS is inconsequential.

          UAH is the product of Spensor and Christy – people you call deniers.

          While RSS is the product of warmists.

          As is typical – you attack the person – not the facts.

          I have not looked at HadCRUT or the other land based rather than global measures in some time.
          But over the past they have tracked very close to UAH and RSS – slightly warmer because land temps are higher than ocean temps, because of UHI effects that are not well accounted for, and because of deliberate and subconscious biases, But fundimentally there is not alot of difference between the Warmist land records and the Satellite records.

          Further if you think Christy and Spensor are wrong – the raw satellite data is publicly available to everyone. You can download it and process it yourself.

          And here is a graph of the error bars for various Satellite systems as compared to the results of Weather Ballons and Radiosondes over the same period.

          https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Sat-datasets-vs-sondes-reanalyses-tropics-Christy-et-al-2018-550×413.jpg

        2. Go to woodfortrees.org and you can plot UAH6.0 VS RSS5.6 vs HadCrut4 from 1979 to present.

          WFT unfortunately does not have the balloon or Radiosonde data – they are a heavily warmist site.

          While UAH has a lower baseline than RSS or HadCrut, they all show the same trends

          HadCrut4 shows a 0.4C global temp DROP since mid 2020.
          And current global mean temps the same as in 1998.

          You can attack Roy Spensor all you want but ALL sources show the same TRENDS if not the same absolute values.

        3. DB when is it that you will learn that the assertions I make are backed up by DATA – not ideology or religion. Not malthusian nonsense.

          Every single global temperature source shows about a 0.5C+- DROP in global temps since 2020.
          Every one shows a flat or near flat trend since 1998.
          You can rant about details if you want, but the FACT is that the long term rate o change – LONG before CO2 had any effect was about 0.11C/decade.
          The Trend since the late 70’s is about 0.13C/decade. The Trend since 1998 is very close to 0C/decade.

          You can fight over these numbers – you can cherry pick the sources showing the most warming – and you STILL can not get trends to actually support the CAGW thesis or to validate he Global Climate Models.

          These are Facts, not beleifs.

          UAH is the most accurate of the satellite series, but the differences between them are not large.

          More importantly Spensor publishes the current deviation from the long term average EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

          As noted he TRENDS between UAH, RSS, and HadCrut4 are close to identical, the deviation will be similarly near identical over the same time period.

        7. I do not need to defend Spensor. The Data does, the other satellite series do, the thermometer series do.

          If you want to debate over the correct base temp in 1979 – I do not care, it does not matter.

          The Trends are nearly identical. That means if Spensor says the40 year anomaly is +0.06C in June 2022 – everyone else will be within a tiny variance the same. If Spensor says that the global trend in 2022 so far is cooling – everyone else will.

          If you beleive that is incorrect – demonstrate that with DATA.

          WFT is a WARMIST source – but it does allow you to graph nearly all the available temp sources.

          Most or all of these are showing COOLING in 2022.

          This is not proof of global cooling – the temperature record is noisy, there are warming years and cooling ones. There is a strong impact of ENSO, AMO, and PDO on individual years.

          What it DOES prove is that the idiocy over heat waves in parts of Europe or the US as proof of CAGW is pure idiocy.

          Next year may warm as this year cools. But ranting about ANYTHING showing Global Warming in the midst of a year that the earth is cooling is PROOF that YOU are selling a religion.

          At any moment in time they earth has hot spots and cold spots – droughts and floods, 100 year high temperatures and 100 year low temperature records are broken.

          If you want to cherry pick weather – you can find evidence of anything at any time.

          Regardless, this is not about spensor – this is not about me. It i about YOU.

          You are the one who is CONSTANTLY wrong.

          Record highs in the US or EU are not proof or even evidence of warming. The current 2022 COOLING trend does NOT refute CAGW, but it DOES refute YOU.

          And your claims that Spensor is constantly wrong are refuted by the fact that UAH is in strong trend agreement all other sources.

        1. Correct – temps have been rising at 0.11C/decade on average since 1750 LONG before CO2 could have had any impact.
          But look at your own graph – even it has this summer as DROPPING.

          We have been over this before – you lost. The Physics does not correlate to the graph you provided.

          In fact the curve bends the wrong way.

          I asked you long ago to graph your own curve for CO2/Temperature – and provided you with links to web sites that will graph equations.

          All it takes is a mark I eyeball to be able to tell you have the wrong curve.

          Why is the wrong curve important ?
          Because it means that something other than CO2 is the major factor.

          Separately your graph is obviously botched. Every valid long term source has 1998 as hotter than every subsequent year except 2016.
          Nor does the graph you provided specify that it is global, rather than land, see, NH, SH or ….

          I do not care if you use Warmist data sources – so long as you are prepared to address the large known flaws in all of them.
          But you can atleast get them right.

          WTF is a warmist site. But the data it provides atleast accurately reflects the known data sources – with all their known flaws.

    2. David,

      Carbon Monoxide is Bad For Humans/animals!!!

      Carbon Dioxide is Good For Humans as it causes Plants/Trees to Grow & gives us Veggies/Apples & Oxygen we need to live!!!!!!!!!!!

      Next:

      If you have 20 gallons of diesel/gasoline & a diesel/gasoline pickup truck how far call you go & when can you leave?

      If you have an inefficient Electric Truck & a dead battery when you leave, how far can you go & how many BTUs of energy did you lose from the Centralized NatGas/Coal fired Electric Power Plant 50-60 miles away?

      There may still be laws against stealing a mans Horse, Stealing our Fuel has the same effect as Steal our Horse & our ability to travel When & Where we wish.

      It’s all that Build Back Better by the WEF/UN/WHO/Globalist Banking Trash like JPM/Goldman, etc.

        1. David,

          I’m limited by time now, I’ll try to get back.

          I’m not up to date but about 7-10 years when I set the energy issue aside it was among other things was Clean, Small, Onsite, Therioum Reactors rather Larger, Dangerous, 50-80 miles away stung by wires the wind can blow down Centralized Uranium powered Nuke Planets that Destroy the Environment.

          Ph’k All Centralized Power!!!!!! 20-plus gallons of fuel onsite, at hand is worth far more fuel in the govt’s pretend in their bush!

          https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thorium+reactor+ted+

          **********

          https://www.infowars.com/posts/car-ownership-soon-outlawed-as-the-great-reset-control-grid-tightens-its-grip/

          1. I am not sure of the short term prospects of Thorium. There are no fundimental problems with Thorium and massive advantages.
            But Thorium reactors are 70 years behind on engineering and we are not going to solve the engineering problems that rapidly.

            Thorium does offer the oportunity to decentralize electric power generation – which is hugely consequential.
            But so does Natural Gas. Most any industry even down to residential level can have their own Gas Turbine electrical generator.
            This allows massive decentralization of the electric grid, which radically improves fault tolerance.
            Further while smaller generators closer to properties are slightly less efficient, decentralized generation massively reduces losses in transmission.

            The holy war the left has waged on Franking is ludicrously stupid. Skipping the Fracking for oil being done in the west – the entire Northeast has massive reserves of NG. Pennsylvania alone has enough known NG reserves to meet all current and projected demands, AND all of europe for 200 years – if we have the pipelines and NG terminals to ship that NG to Europe. Yet nothing is being done on that.
            New York likely has more NG reserves than PA – but almost nothing is being done to make use of those.

            NG is by far the most Climate lunatic friendly form of Fossil Fuel. Most US reductions in CO2 and other polutants in the past couple of decades have been because we have replaced significant Coal burning with NG.

        1. RE: “Hold George Mallory,Batman!! “An interesting video serving a variety of purposes. This is, of course, among other motives, is an exercise in feasibility and capability absent time constraints, not a time-sensitive trip to a holiday family gathering. Why Tesla chooses to build a chain of supercharging stations on this difficult road of many conditions and obstacles, between the point of origin and China’s Everest base camp piques my curiosity. A test bed perhaps? A five day journey, approx 311 mi/day, an overnight requiring a camp fire as well as internal heating, and stops at 8 recharging stations. Time to recharge vehicles not provided. IMPORTANT!. Of course, a modern superhighway would impact the time positively. China postulates being carbon neutral by 2060. How do they plan to generate electric power by that date? They are certainly not cutting back on the use of coal and oil at this writing. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57483492

  15. “The review found the bill would actually ‘very slightly increase inflation until 2024”  Democrats are incapable of telling us the truth.  It’s almost always the opposite of everything they say it is.  It’s the reason they change the meaning of words – every time they get caught.

    1. Not a problem – inflation is only transitory, and we are not in a recession.

      1. John Say,
        Funny is it not, the same people who said inflation was transitory are the same ones who got that wrong. And in the past, they are the same ones who have said the definition of a recession is two consecutive contractions of GDP.
        Those economists, and MSM pundits are likely to get this wrong too.
        Regardless, the average American is feeling the pain of inflation everyday at the pump, or at the grocery store.
        This is all about gaslighting Americans, lies and spin.

        Watching the farmers and ranchers selling off their herds?

        1. The same ideology and politics is constantly asking us to beleive them over the evidence of our own eyes.

          I would like to beleive that since the 80’s we have found a magic bullet to make inflation go away, but wishes are not reality.
          The Fed is doing the same thing that Volker did in 1980 – driving interest rates up. and deliberately causing a recession.

          Further why create the stupid debate over the precise definition of recession. Next month is NOT going to be better, Next quarter is NOT going to be better.

          Pretending this is not real is not going to work.

          Nor is the economy the only place we are expected to accept claims that are obviously false.

          Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russia disinformation.

          The 2020 election was the best ever,

          VP Biden had nothing to do with his son’s efforts to sell VP Biden’s political influence.

          The Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

          If you like your insurance you can keep it.

          Everyone we do not like is a racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, hateful, hating hater.

          Masks work.

          Lockdowns work,

          Vaccines work.

          The economy had stalled when I entered office.

          I am responsible for the strongest job creation economy in modern times.

          Since I took office, families are carrying less debt, their average savings are up.

          1. John B Say,
            Well said and right you are.
            They say Trump lied.
            Biden and his entire admin lie. They do it every day. And they will continue to lie, even when we know they are lying, they know we know they are lying.

            1. RE:”they will continue to lie, even when we know they are lying, they know we know they are lying.” The contempt the political establishment has for the electorate is a function of the fact that incumbents continue to be returned to the fold. Groucho Marx would have put it this way. “I could never have any respect a constituency which would raise ME to high office.” They don’t.

        2. In 2020 we had two consequential problems.

          Covid and BLM riots.

          Today I have lost count.

          It is self evident that we were lied to over and over about covid – and that the same liars continue to lie, even lying about their lying.
          It is self evident that however badly you think Trump did with Covid – Biden has done worse.
          It is self evident that no matter how bad you think Trump did on anything – Biden has done worse.

          It is self evident that if the economy is not in recession right now – it will be near immediately.

          Nor is it likely to end soon.

          It is self evident that on issue after issue this administration is doing the WRONG thing.

          In 2020, we still had Covid, and we still had BLM riots.
          But we had 3 years of rising standard of living – particularly for minorities and the working class.
          China was effectively contained,
          Russia was contained.
          The mideast was at peace.

          We had every reason to beleive that with or without covid things would get better.

          When Republicans were saying in jan 2021 that they were retaking the house in 2022, I was cautioning that all Biden had to do was NOTHING and democrats could easily end up with a near permanent majority.

          But nearly everything has gone to h311 since.

          It has not gone south because of a virus, or because evil republicans have sabotaged everything.

          It has gone to h311 because Democrats have enacted stupid policies.

          Biden is not entirely responsible for inflation. Monetizing our Debt started with Obama, and continued under Trump.
          Atleast 1/3 of the massive and clearly needless Covid spending occurred under Trump.
          Had Biden not passed through further massive spending – he could blame inflation on Trump.
          But by doubling down on spending and monetized debt – Biden and democrats own inflation, they own the recession that is necescary to clear it.
          They own the economy. They own the rising global tensions.

          Does anyone think that China would threaten to shoot down the Speaker of the Houses aircraft if Trump were president ?

          I think that government projections of the impact of legislation – are gargbage – they ALWAYS have been.
          I do not think Wharton’s assessment is much better – except that it is not in total denial.

  16. George, it seems to me that “general welfare” and “regulate commerce” are broad terms and include things that make up “welfare” and “commerce”. The Supreme Court has agreed with that interpretation and I don’t understand why you have decided to narrowly construe those broad terms.

    1. THE FRAMERS DID NOT MAKE A MISTAKE.

      GENERAL MEANS ALL.

      THE FRAMERS WERE EMINENTLY INTELLIGENT AND INFUSED WITH FULL ACUMEN REGARDING LANGUAGE AND THE USAGE THEREOF.

      Please read the Constitution.

      Maximal freedom is provided to Americans; that you don’t like that, does not bear.

      Free people, enterprises and industries make their own, free decisions and self-regulate, of necessity, or not.

      That you don’t enjoy or recommend freedom does not bear; you have not the dominion of the Constitution, not does any other individual.

      Powers to regulate are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 – they include the value of money, commerce among the States, and land and naval Forces.

      Those who seek personal power ignore the Constitution and “legislate” unconstitutionally without any power or authority to do so.

      That one does not enjoy the substantial and severe limitations and restrictions in the Constitution, does not make them invalid or illegitimate.

      That time has passed, does not amend or modify those substantial and severe limitations and restrictions.

      Acts contrary must be declared void.
      _____________________________

      “…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”

      “…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”

      “[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

      – Alexander Hamilton
      _________________

      GENERAL MEANS ALL.
      ___________________

      Merriam-Webster

      general adjective

      gen·​er·​al | \ ˈjen-rəl
      , ˈje-nə- \
      Definition of general

      1 : involving, applicable to, or affecting the whole
      _______________________________________

      Collins Dictionary

      Definition of ’general’

      general

      adjective [ADJ n

      2. If you talk about the general situation somewhere or talk about something in general terms, you are describing the situation as a whole rather than considering its details or exceptions.
      __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

      Lexico Oxford Dictionary

      Meaning of general in English:

      general
      Pronunciation /ˈdʒɛn(ə)rəl/

      adjective

      1 Affecting or concerning all or most people or things; widespread.
      ‘books of general interest’

      1.1Not specialized or limited in range of subject, application, activity, etc.

      ‘brush up on your general knowledge’

      1.2(of a rule, principle, etc.) true for all or most cases.

      2 Considering or including only the main features or elements of something; not exact or detailed.
      ________________________________________________________________________________

      Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

      Definition of general

      general adjective

      /ˈdʒenrəl/
      Idioms

      – affecting all – affecting all or most people, places or things

      – not exact – including the most important aspects of something; not exact or detailed

    2. All Well Proceed,

      Services and Commodities that All Use In Similar Amounts and Frequency, Not Provided by the Private Sector.

      General Welfare:

      Roads

      Water

      Sewer

      Post Office

      Electricity

      Internet

      Trash Pick-Up

      Etc.

    3. The supreme court considers the General Welfare clause meaningless and always has.

      The commerce clause is limited to interstate commerce. Once upon a time that limit actually meant what it said.
      Further the founders gave the federal government power over interstate commerce to prevent states from getting into trade wars.

      The expectation was that the federal government would do nothing.

      That is the actual constitutional history.

      1. SO WRONG. American freedom persisted for a mere 71 years before Lincoln destroyed it and began the incremental implementation of the principles of communism in America. The proof is in the pudding. Just as every president before Obama was a certified “natural born citizen,” having two parents who were citizens at the time of birth of the candidate, NEVER before FDR’s WPA and the Ludlow Massacre, 1914, did Congress unconstitutionally tax for “general Welfare” as individual welfare payments, specific welfare payments, particular welfare payments, charitable payments, or WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS, Obamacare, regulate private enterprise, industries, substance ingestion, or confiscate private property through unconstitutional “labor laws”, affirmative action, quotas, rent control, “fair housing,” “non-discrimination, (of course, the first step of freedom is discrimination) etc.

        America began its Progressive “fundamental transformation” into communism under Abraham Lincoln who espoused Marx’s pejoratives, “capitalism” and “fleece the people,” and Marx’s philosophy in 1837.
        ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

        “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”

        – Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
        __________________________________________________________

        “Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”

        – Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
        __________________________________________________________________________________

        “The goal of Socialism is Communism.”

        – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
        _________________

        “The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”

        – Karl Marx and the First International Workingmen’s Association to Lincoln, 1864
        ________________________________________________________________

        Letter of congratulation and commendation from Karl Marx to Abraham Lincoln, Marx’s “earnest of the epoch” leading America toward “the RECONSTRUCTION of a social world.”

        https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
        _____________________________________________________________

        SO RIGHT. The commerce clause eliminated bias or favor by one State over another. That is all. People, workers, enterprises and industries are free, free of interference and intercession by government and free from tyranny.

        Americans are to be free to make their own decisions, while they may not commit property damage or bodily injury, and are liable for civil damages.

        1. You say I am wrong about the General Welfare clause and then proceed to demonstrate that you think I am right ?

  17. No one ever pays attention to the sequencing of expenditures and taxes/savings. According to the Wharton analysis, the bill results in net spending through the end of FY 2026. Net savings only begin in FY 2027. Given that projections likely deteriorate in reliability the further out they go, the sequencing is likely even worse.

    How does increased net spending through at least FY 2026 reduce inflation? Inflation is an issue today, not one beginning half way through the next Presidential term.

    1. Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary problem… said some obscure economist once.

    2. Wharton is wrong.
      This will be WORSE than Wharton claims.

      When EVER has a government projection proven true ?

      1. John, sorry to say but I agree with you. Even the present bills spend, spend and spend for half a decade and then the savings start. The savings are never what the are supposed to be.

        The economic disaster the left has imposed on America and the world will be worse than any of us can remember. I think the Carter years will be looked upon fondly.

        1. Just about every government claim ever regarding Tax revenues is WRONG.

          We are very near the revenue optimizing maximum tax rate – this is BTW not the optimal tax rate – that would be about 1/3 or more lower.

          If you draw a curve of Tax revenue vs tax rates and you set about 38% as the apogee – you will have a curve that rises quickly at low rates and high rates and flattens out as you approach that maximum.

          Small increases or decreases near the maximum will have no perceivable effect.

          It is likely that you need to change tax rates by atleast 10% to get a 3% change in revenue.
          Further if you are at or near the revenue max – all changes will REDUCE tax revenue slightly.

          I do not think we are exactly at the maximum. But I think we are close. The lack of impact of tax changes over the past 2 decade appears to confirm that.

          Right now the biggest impact on taxes will be the economy itself – a declining economy will much more strongly impact tax revenue than tax rates.
          A growing economy will impact tax revenues more than tax rates.

          While changes in tax rates do not have consequential impacts on tax revenue near the top of the curve.
          Changes in the economy have amplified impacts. A 2% drop in growth in many instances is a 1/3 drop in profits – and to a large extent we tax profits.
          Even where we tax revenue – drops in revenue bring us into lower tax brackets. Further we have an increasingly two step tax system – where we pay little or no taxes on the first 100K of out income and significantly higher taxes after that. That is the impact of increases in the standard deduction.

          Regardless, I have never seen a tax model that attempts to predict the impact of changes in tax rates that was plausible.

          I constantly attack warmists – because it is quite obvious at this point that Warmist climate predictions neither hind cast nor forecast anywhere close to accurately.

          Our tax models where we have far better data, far fewer variables and far better ability to predict – are overly simplistic garbage that no one with a modicum of sense would beleive.

          Any Representative of Senator who beleives the claims of GAO or OMB or CBO regarding the cost of legislation – is an idiot.

          I do not think they beleive. They just want a good score to allow them to do as they wish.

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