Grover Glenn Norquist

Governments throughout the Western world are spending at levels that could not have been imagined by pre-war economists - even by people such as Keynes. High levels of government spending have had a significant effect on economic growth and on economic freedom. In his 2013 Hayek lecture, Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, explains how the tide can be turned. He discusses both the political and economic mechanisms necessary to effect change. In three commentaries on the lecture, economists set the UK and European context and discuss how policy changes on this side of the Atlantic can make our economies more conducive to reform. Such reforms are necessary, argue all the authors, to ensure that we have dynamic economies in which governments serve the needs of their citizens rather than simply tax and spend more. This monograph is essential reading for students of political economy as well as all those interested in economic reform and the policy debates taking place in the United States.

A provocative critique of the Obama administration's economic policies and an examination of America's difficult economic future During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised "a net spending cut" to make government smaller in order to reduce the deficit. But this huge increase in government spending and debt, and the resulting prospect of higher taxes, will make America a poorer country. Are Americans happier because the government has determined where this money should be spent? According to John Lott and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, the answer is no, and in Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future they explain why. Obama's economic policies have raised unemployment, slowed economic growth, dramatically raised the national debt, squandered taxpayer money through poor investments, and damaged the housing market. The book explains why Obama's policies on spending, taxes, and regulation have all worked to harm the recovery, increase unemployment, and depress housing prices. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficits that President Obama proposes for the years from 2011 through 2020 come to a staggering $126,000 per family of four, and John Lott and Grover Norquist make clear why the costs outweigh the benefitsExplains why Keynesian economics is more a way of transferring wealth to political constituencies than a legitimate economic theory for understanding how the economy operatesPosits that Obama's economic policies were more an opportunity "to do big things" than to solve the country's economic problems Arguing that the policies of the Obama administration have created widespread economic chaos, Debacle is a bleak look at American finance from Grover Norquist.