Trump celebrates his (very expensive) tax cuts for himself and his rich golfing buddies Remember how Trump sold the Republicans’ $1.5 trillion-deficit-creating tax cut plan as a boon for the middle class that was going to create jobs and raise wages? That was in September, when he told congressional lawmakers at the White House that […]
By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) Today’s mountains of wealth throttle the very engine of wealth creation itself. Insanely Concentrated Wealth Is Strangling Our Prosperity Remember Smaug the dragon, in The Hobbit? He hoarded up a vast pile of wealth, and then he just hung out in his cave, sitting on it (with occasional forays to […]
By Maia Szalavitz via Naked Capitalism and cross posted from Evonomics; originally co-published at the Guardian and Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Why Inequality Predicts Homicide Rates Better Than Any Other Variable – research suggests that inequality raises the stakes of fights for status among men. The connection is so strong that, according to the World Bank, a simple […]
I had a post the other day trying to make sense of changes in healthcare costs. Based on some of the comments to that post, a bit more thought, some data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the CPI-All Urban Consumers, I think my point distills down to this graph: (click to embiggen) The […]
Does Iran Have A “Poland Problem”? Maybe somewhat, but not as much as Poland does, with a “Poland problem” being where a well performing economy does not prevent political unhappiness. Iran is experiencing massive demonstrations that are heavily driven by economic complaints, even though economic performance has improved since the adoption and approval of the […]
This National Bureau of Economic research paper is behind a paywall, but the premise is up for discussion: This Paper challenges two widely held views: first that trade performance has been the primary reason for the declining share of manufacturing employment in the United States and other industrial economies, and second that recent productivity growth […]
(Dan here…Social Security is an issue that seems to generate a lot of firm beliefs and passion, as witness recent threads. It is rare that people refer to actuary material. On the other sides of the issue are people like Andrew Biggs, who is knowledgeable and smart in his arguments. I am posting this as […]
I don’t follow healthcare as much as others at this blog. I started playing around with some graphs at FRED and got a bit confused. I don’t mind being confused, but I like to clear up that confusion eventually. So perhaps someone can tell me what’s going on. First, this graph of healthcare expenditures / […]