Ed Kilgore, who is not a hypocrite, still advocates limited use of the filibuster even now that Republicans have a Senate majority. He wrote The filibuster has always been a monstrous but mitigated abuse—monstrous in its antidemocratic pretensions but mitigated by rare use. I see little reason for its use right now when the president […]
These are the usual confused thoughts mostly stimulated by this excellent post by Simon Wren-Lewis You really should click the link and read that post. I will try to summarise it. First professor Wren-Lewis argues that monetary policy would not have offset less contractionary fiscal policy in the past 6 years, because short term safe […]
Basic income in a Dauphin Manitoba. Less boring headline ? Social Welfare Programs and the Culture of Dependency III. Click the link. Note that just giving poor people money causes increased high school enrollment.
Jonathan (FBD) Weisman hands the mike to Paul Ryan who denounces Obama’s trickledown envy economics Mr Ryan [skip] also opposed “envy economics,” a hit on Mr. Obama’s proposals to curb tax breaks on huge individual retirement accounts, to raise the capital gains tax and to tax inheritances based on the value of assets when they […]
Tbe Italian parliament has elected Sergio Mattarella president of the republic. For US readers, the Italian President is like the constitutional monarch of the parliamentary republic. Actual controversial decisions are made by the prime minister (now Matteo Renzi). The president has great power in theory on the understanding that it is used only of the […]
Disappointingly, the BEA flash estimate is that US GDP grew at an annualized rate of only 2.6% from the third to the fourth quarter of 2014 after having grown at a 5 % annualized rate from the second to the third. This is well within the ordinary range of changes of growth rates without a […]
US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company. Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter, which tops the $15.9bn made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard and Poor’s Wowww in one quarter Apple made 3/14ths of […]
The CBO lowered its forecast of the cost of the Affordable Care Act by 20% h.t. Richard Mayhew and @StevenTDennis Here is the CBO report (pdf warning) I clip and past a dramatic graph They also estimate that it has caused 12 million more people to have insurance. This is the net increase subtracting cancelled […]
According to exit polls the leftist party Syriza clearly won the Greek elections Two exit polls show Syriza with a 12.5 percentage point lead over nearest party, New Demoracy. update a bit more: One poll suggested Syriza took 35.5% of the votes, and the other suggested it took 39.5%, well ahead of the ruling New […]
A fairly large number of economists have argued that Keynesians predicted that the fiscal cliff January 2013 and sequestration March 2013 would cause a recession. A fairly large number of Keynesian economists have denied personally making that prediction (including the oversigned). Only following a complaint in comments will I look up all the links at […]