by Rebecca Wilder The Italian Economy Is Sliding Today I.Stat released the breakdown of Q1 2012 real GDP for the Italian economy. Weak external demand plus a precipitous drop in private sector spending dragged the headline real gross domestic product (GDP) 0.8% over the quarter (3.2% at an annualized rate). The highlights are the following: […]
by Professor Barkley Rosser Reposted from Econospeak with permission from the author Which Spending Is Easier To Cut And By What Level Of Government? Back from his break, our former co-blogger, Dean Baker at Beat the Press, takes down WaPo ed page editor, Fred Hiatt, for his pushing yet again for cutting Social Security because […]
by Mike Kimel Punishing Irresponsible Parents and Punishing the Children of Irresponsible Parents Not long ago, my wife came home a bit shocked. My wife has a small business: she buys houses, fixes them up, and puts renters in them. If I may brag about my wife a moment, I note she buys well, is […]
Via Truthout this article points us to a trend in some states that instead of ‘restoring’ state government funding for services such as teachers, firefighters, and police, tax cuts are implemented to “establish a different spending baseline from 2008” or that “a policy of tax cuts will foster economic growth to enhance revenue”. … state income and […]
by Kenneth Thomas Is Globalization Good for America’s Middle Class? Part 1 In this blog, I have frequently documented economic trends that have been bad for the middle class: Declining real wages, steadily falling bang for the healthcare buck, stagnant educational attainment, the gigantic cost of tax havens, etc. With this post, I want to […]
By Noni Mausa Let’s Play “You Be The Sucker!” Let’s see. Business and banks have heaps of money – and aren’t hiring, spending their money, or loaning it out. Meanwhile, a few million working-age Americans have no money and no work, and many are young, strong, highly trained and capable. Business is complaining that they […]
Yves Smith has a very long post on Malcolm Gladwell: Yves here. Yasha Levine and Mark Ames have launched the S.H.A.M.E. Project, which stands for “Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics.” Its approach is to provide information about the background and funding sources of well-recognized journalists and pundits so that the public will be […]
by Noni Mausa Wealthy Non-Taxpayers — From 60 to Thousands in 30 Years Bruce Bartlett provides the numbers, but it’s so much easier to see in a chart. Wealthy Non-Taxpayers 1977 to 2009, showing incomes over $200,000 per year. Blue is percentage of total households over $200,000 paying no taxes, purple is numbers of high-income […]
by Mike Kimel Variations on “Only Nixon Can Go to China” This is not a short post. Be forewarned. A few years ago, I co-authored a book called Presimetrics with Michael E. Kanell, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In the book, we tried to take an objective look at how Presidents performed on […]