Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

More on the Labor Force Surge and 70s Stagflation

There’s great discussion out there on this topic, see Steve Randy Waldman’s links list here. Karl Smith gives us this graph and asks: I mean, honestly, would you look at the graph above and conclude that during the 1970s the economy dangerously overheated. I’d like to offer a perhaps more useful (though more complicated) look. […]

Will “the Bros” Buy Insurance in 2014? If Your Son (or Boyfriend) is Uninsured, Please Send Him This Post

 by Maggie Mahar  from The Health Beat blog Will “the Bros” Buy Insurance in 2014? If Your Son (or Boyfriend) is Uninsured, Please Send Him This Post Some young men say they never go to the doctor. Why, they ask, should they buy into Obamacare? Obamacare saboteurs are urging them to boycott the state marketplaces […]

How should underpayment of employees affect tax policy?

by Linda Beale How should underpayment of employees affect tax policy? In a pre-Labor Day blogposting, Robert Reich wrote about the brute capitalism results for many employees today–a full-time job that doesn’t play a living wage.  Walmart was his example–“America’s biggest employer” where a “typical employee is still paid less than $9 an hour.”  See […]

Has the Fed rate done a good job to balance inflation over the years?

In light of the recent discussions of inflation in the 1970’s (Steve Roth and Steve Randy Waldman), I ask… how well has the Federal Reserve done in setting a Fed rate to balance inflation over the years? Including the 1970’s… Actually very well, except for Volcker in the 1980’s. First, let me state that there […]

The Republicans in Michigan Pout with the Passage of the Medicaid Expansion

“I think this expansion of government by 400,000 to 500,000 new people that are depending on the government for health care is more nauseating than probably just about any tax increase that we can put forth simply because it is an entitlement we are not going to be able to be rein in,” Republican Michigan […]

An Effective Demand look at the 1980 recession to envision the next recession

It is good to look back at the 1980 recession and analyze what happened. First, the recession officially started in July of 1980. Be that as it may, the business cycle had already topped off in the 3rd quarter of 1978 when the economy hit the effective demand limit. Capacity utilization started falling the same […]