Many have noted that Trump has the strange idea that he can destroy the US health care financing system & people will blame Obama. I actually think he is wrong about this — many polls show that a solid majority of US adults say they will Republicans responsible (yes I know it’s unfair to think […]
They are monsters The President and his GOP majorities in Congress are monsters. As one commentator on NPR put it yesterday afternoon, the President’s default mode is to toss an armed hand grenade into a room in order to create chaos. He can then pick out the most vulnerable, and use that leverage to enter […]
Trump’s Healthcare Executive Order Trump Signs Executive Order relaxing ACA health insurance rules. About a week or so ago, I had read this elsewhere, mentioned it, and was told there was no way this would happen. Similar to the three attempts to defund the ACA, Trump is doing what he says the Senate could not […]
According to Modern Healthcare: “In a brash move likely to roil insurance markets, President Donald Trump will ‘immediately’ halt payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act. Before sunrise Friday morning, Trump went on Twitter to urge Democrats to make a deal: ‘The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding, massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies […]
By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) How Amazon’s Accounting Makes Rich People’s Income Invisible Image you’re Jeff Bezos, circa 1998. You’re building a company (Amazon) that stands to make you and your compatriots vastly rich. But looking forward, you see a problem: if your company makes profits, it will have to pay taxes on […]
IMF Fiscal Monitor: Progressive Taxation Need Not Deter Growth The latest from the IMF is a must read for progressives even if it runs contrary to the nonsense coming out of the White House: At the global level, inequality has declined substantially over the past three decades, but within national boundaries, the picture is mixed: […]
Hassett’s Evidence on Transfer Pricing and the U.S. Trade Deficit In my last post, I questioned Kevin Hassett’s claim that transfer pricing manipulation was responsible for half of our trade deficit and asked what was the paper he referenced. We have the text of his speech: There is another important factor to consider when thinking […]
Puerto Rico, Transfer Pricing, and Kevin Hassett Scott Greenberg provided a nice summary of what section 936 was and how its expiration had contributed to Puerto Rico’s economic and fiscal difficulties: beginning in 1976, section 936 of the tax code granted U.S. corporations a tax exemption from income originating from U.S. territories. In addition to […]
One more scene from the September jobs report: late cycle deceleration continues The rate of year over year job growth is probably the single best mid-expansion indicator, in part because there is very little noise in the Establishment survey jobs data YoY. But, as the below graph shows, going back all the way to 1948, […]