Lifted from an e-mail from reader Jack (http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2013/12/20391.html#comments): (attribution corrected…irony comes to mind) Compare Fujita’s conclusion from the Fed paper, here  http://philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/research-rap/2013/on-the-causes-of-declines-in-the-labor-force-participation-rate.pdf#page=7, with da Costa’s description in the WSJ. da Costa, “Philly Fed economist Shigeru Fujita argues that the shrinking of the U.S. workforce over the past year and half was “entirely due to retirement” […]

By Dale Coberly HOW MUCH INTEREST DOES SOCIAL SECURITY PAY? A reader asked what interest does Social Security pay on your “investment”?  I think it is important to realize that this is not the important question about Social Security.  Social Security is an insurance program and it doesn’t make any more sense to talk about […]

Lifted from comments by Fred C. Dobbs at Economist View: Supersize My Wage http://nyti.ms/1cOvtvS NYT Magazine – December 17, 2013 – ANNIE LOWREY About 20 years ago, in the midst of a recession, New Jersey decided to boost its minimum wage to $5.05 an hour from $4.25. Its neighbor to the west, Pennsylvania, chose not […]

Via Economist View comes Mark Thoma’s statement My latest column: Of Course the Safety Net Redistributes Income…That’s Why It Works: Many conservatives have attacked social insurance programs such as Social Security and Obamacare because they redistribute income from the rich to the poor, the young to the old, or from makers to takers. But there […]

From the Economic Populist: The Latest Never Ending Adventures in Corporatism Via the TPP –  Wikileaks has published more secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement documents, revealing more and more how the United States represents large corporations and not the citizens of the nation.  The Huffington Post published a large front page story is on the Trans-Pacific […]

Joseph P. Joyce (is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs Guest post: Speaking Truth to Power When the full history of the European debt crisis is related, one important part of the story will be the uneasy relationship of the International […]

From author Heidi Shierholz at Economic Policy Institute: A blog post by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa in the Wall Street Journal highlights findings from a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia that much of the shrinking of the U.S. workforce has been due to workers retiring early… … I’ve looked at the breakdown […]

Even though this post by Spencer England is from 2008 and hence dated, it reminds us of the overall experience of making it in America: by Spencer England Making comparisons over time of how real income grows is a difficult proposition with many data problems. One recent study was able to show how a current […]

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