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1 month ago | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
Gross domestic product is most accurate when it accounts for all of a country’s economic output, including that facilitated by government spending. GDP measures the dollar value of all the goods and services produced in a country and consumed by end users in a given period of time. Government spending funds a significant amount of the economy’s production, including national defense, infrastructure, education, health care, policing, and firefighting.
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1 month ago | 
econofact.org | Keshav Srikant |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
A Bankrate survey about Americans’ willingness to use their savings for an emergency expense did not show that a majority of Americans have less than $1,000 saved. Instead, it found that about 40% of Americans would use their savings for an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense. The rest said they’d use a credit card (25%), reduce other spending (13%), borrow from family or friends (13%), take out a loan (5%), or something else (4%).
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1 month ago | 
econofact.org | Timothy Valk |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
Existing congestion pricing schemes have generally shown to be effective in improving traffic flows, incentivizing commuters to car pool or take public transit to avoid charges. Singapore was the first major urban area to operate a comprehensive congestion charging program. Car trips into central Singapore came down 10-15% in the two years after introduction of their 1988 Electronic Road Pricing scheme, charging for the use of main throughways.
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2 months ago | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
Government spending was not the sole cause of inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic; ending it involves more than just reducing spending. President Trump approved $3.1 trillion in COVID stimulus and President Biden approved $1.9 trillion more. Estimates vary on the contribution of this spending to inflation. MIT researchers attributed 42% of post-pandemic inflation through February 2022 to the stimulus while FRED estimated it accounted for about one-third in January 2023.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
Nearly 70% of the $175 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion was spent in the U.S. or on U.S. forces, according to a study by the American Enterprise Institute published in May 2024. Examples include the Presidential Drawdown Authority, the Foreign Military Financing Program and the Ukraine Security Assistant Initiative. The PDA arms Ukraine and pays U.S. companies for replenishing that armament.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Keshav Srikant |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
While rent control makes targeted housing more affordable for recipients by capping rent hikes, it has in some cases made housing more expensive overall. A meta-analysis of 112 empirical studies on the effects of rent control found that the policy can financially discourage developers from building new housing while encouraging landlords to convert their rentals into homes.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
Both Democrats and Republicans express higher confidence in the economy when the sitting president belongs to their party and lower confidence when the president belongs to the other party. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index most recently documented this phenomenon in the transition between presidents Trump and Biden.
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Nov 14, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
The 2018-19 tariffs increased prices for both imported and domestically produced goods. The tariffs required U.S. companies to pay an additional fee to import many foreign goods. Some companies passed on these fees to consumers by raising retail prices. Domestic producers responded by raising the prices of their own goods, which became artificially more competitive.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Keshav Srikant |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
History shows mass deportations cause job losses for American citizens. The anti-immigrant efforts of the Kennedy, Johnson, Roosevelt and Coolidge administrations either “generated no new jobs or earnings” or “harmed U.S. workers’ employment and earnings,” according to PIIE. More recently, an analysis of President Obama’s deportation efforts found that deporting 500,000 immigrants causes around 44,000 job losses for U.S.-born workers.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
econofact.org | Gabriel DeLuca Vinocur |Michael Klein |Nora Gordon |Jennifer Hunt
The tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese goods in 2018 had a net negative effect on manufacturing jobs as well overall U.S. employment. The Federal Reserve Board found that the tariffs caused a reduction in manufacturing employment of 1.4%. Modest gains (0.3%) achieved by shielding domestic producers from foreign competition were “more than offset” by rising production costs for manufacturers who used steel as an input (-1.1%) and retaliatory tariffs (-0.7%).
