Denmark isn’t a middle-class, capitalist, entrepreneurial country? Because it has universal healthcare, free college, free day care, and guaranteed family and medical leave? Really, Secretary Clinton? Really? — Me, here, Oct. 14 No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to […]
In a comment to this post of mine from yesterday in which I used the phrase “affordable daycare,” reader Eric377 posted this comment: Eric377/October 18, 2015 7:50 am Leaves I understand as policy. Affordable daycare a whole lot less. Affordable daycare is not what is meant here. States could change regulations to allow lower cost daycare. Is […]
Hillary Clinton never, ever says the word “families” without prefacing it with the adjective “hardworking.” It’s downright Pavlovian. And every time I hear her say “families”—which is often—and therefore “hardworking” in reference to families, I wonder whether she’s dividing workers into hardworking ones and ones who slough off their work onto their colleagues, or something. […]
Guess Post by Alan Collinge, Founder of The Student Loan Justice Organization When I first started researching the student loan issue over a decade ago, it quickly became obvious that there was one congressman the student lending industry loved more than anyone else: John Boehner. Sallie Mae (the nation’s largest student loan company), through its […]
Senator Sanders did vote five times against the Brady Bill. Since it was passed, more than 2 million prohibited purchases have been prevented. He also did vote, as he said, for this immunity provision. I voted against it. I was in the Senate at the same time. It wasn’t complicated to me. It was pretty […]
Kevin Drum notes that the 4 week average ratio of new unemployment insurance claims to employment is the lowest ever recorded He wonders if it has anything to do with tighter standards for receiving unemployment insurance. I think it is just that the labor market is authentically tight. The Job vacancy rate is roughly tied […]
Way to rally the base Turtle Neck! NY Times: No Social Security Raises Even if Medicare Soars WASHINGTON — The 60 million people on Social Security will not receive any cost-of-living increase in their benefits in 2016, the government said Thursday, but because of a quirk in federal law, nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries could […]
Adair Turner was interviewed by INET about his new book which I have to buy and read. The book came out this week. It is called, Between Debt and the Devil. Here is the interview. (link) He lays out an exquisite analysis of economics on many layers. How the crisis was not expected due to […]
This has produced another edition of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions.” Just to expand this a bit, and to deal with the 1987 absurdity, the proximate cause of the 1989 adjustment—an adjustment of less than 10% in the Dow that only took two full calendar months to return to its level at close on 12 […]