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

George Will Comes Out for Single-Payer Healthcare Insurance! Cool!

WASHINGTON — Someone you probably are not familiar with has filed a suit you probably have not heard about concerning a four-word phrase you should know about. The suit could blow to smithereens something everyone has heard altogether too much about, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ACA). … The four words that […]

Republican State of Disunion: Taxes Edition

The Republican response to the President’s State of the Union message was delivered by Washington State Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.  It was personal, platitude-ridden, overtly religious, twee, and devoid of policy content or anything else of relevant substance – other than a naked assertion that BHO’s policies are making life harder in myriad unspecified ways. […]

The Republicans’ Winning Rallying Cry: Bring back the G.W. Bush policies! Yeah, THAT’s the ticket to prosperity for all!

The ticket to the middle class is not higher taxes on the very businesses that must create the jobs… Economic growth will come when we lower taxes for everyone, especially people who own businesses and create jobs. — Rand Paul, last night Absolutely.  The G.W. Bush presidency was terrific for economic growth!  It wasn’t a […]

The Myth of Maximizing Shareholder Value… INET interview with William Lazonick

Passing along a great video from INET with its interview of William Lazonick. He talks about the ideology changes through the 80’s, stock buy-backs, labor becoming a commodity and lack of real investment for the future. Yet, he mentions another very important thing… There is an ideology that only shareholders take risk, so therefore they […]

Going past what is sustainable… Another market failure

There are quite a few shifts happening in the global and domestic economy. I have been observing for the past week. So many people are getting confused. Here is a list of concerns… China is slowing down. Some emerging markets are facing capital outflows and are tempted to raise their central bank interest rates. Argentina […]

No: Saving Does Not Increase Savings

The misconceptions embodied in this post’s headline sow more confusion in economic discussions than any others. “Saving” and “Savings” seem like simple concepts, but they’re not. They have many different meanings, and their different usages (often implicit or unconscious) make coherent understanding and discussion impossible — even, often, in writings by those who have otherwise […]

Teen employment and minimum wages

by Spencer England Last week Kevin Erdmann  at the idiosyncratic whisk blog published this chart to demonstrate how minimun wages have caused teen employment to suffer. It is an interesting chart, but it suffers from the sin of omitted variables. I constantly see similar charts from those opposing the minimum wage were they seem to […]

The 27% Crazification Factor Again

It’s that number again. As noted by Dylan Scott at TPM, according to the latest Pew poll 27% of US adults think that the Republican party “is more willing to work with the other party” than the Democratic party. For earlier appearances of 27% see Kung Fu Monkey John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% […]