Economic Populism Is a Dead-End for Democrats recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal, appropriately enough, and comes from Third Way.  A commenter asked why it was important to list who was on the trustee list, which included some Dems and others.  I won’t go through the laundry list on taxes, social safety net, and other […]

Sadly, not in the real world. But in the econoblogosphere. Much of that is arguably thanks to the newly launched Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Traveling and family time, so I can’t do a big writeup, so just a few somewhat randomly chosen links: Brad Plumer: Is inequality bad for economic growth? Jared Bernstein: The Impact of Inequality […]

A note at  Baseline Scenario  seemed ironic at a glance : Preventing Regulatory Capture is finally on sale (which means you can’t download it for free from Tobin anymore)    ( Preventing Regulatory Capture.)

I have a student in Argentina that sent me a message today. He says that it has become extremely difficult to take money out of the banks, even $100 USD. It is considered capital flight with legal difficulties. He says that $2 billion USD are leaving Argentina daily. The Argentine peso has been falling but […]

Link to video here. Richard Wolff is on fire here. He is explaining the cooperative model and why it will save the US. I have never seen a better video on the subject. This video should be required listening for all economists. The ideas presented should be reflected upon and understood. When I was studying […]

Hilary W. Hoynes, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, Douglas Almond made a genuinely important contribution to the debate on the effects of social welfare programs in this NBER working paper/revised manuscript “Long Run Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net” They took advantage of a natural experiment to estimate the long run effects of access to […]

It’s critical to understand that Third Way presents itself as “centrist” and a think tank: Third Way Via Huffington Post Bill Black summarizes the profiles of the trustees: Twenty of the twenty-nine trustees come from finance (counting the lawyer whose specialty is representing private equity firms). Their most common background is Mitt Romney’s — private […]

(Reuters) – Employers tried the carrot, then a small stick. Now they are turning to bigger cudgels. For years they encouraged workers to improve their health and productivity with free screenings, discounted gym memberships and gift cards to lose weight. More recently, a small number charged smokers slightly higher premiums to get them to quit. […]

In his speech on inequality Barack Obama said it’s also true that some programs in the past, like welfare before it was reformed, were sometimes poorly designed, created disincentives to work, but we’ve also seen how government action time and again can make an enormous difference in increasing opportunity and bolstering ladders into the middle […]