I’m delighted to see the U Chicago IGM Forum ask a really useful, non-softball question. The panelists are evenly split on whether an increase to $9 would make it “noticeably harder for low-skilled workers to find employment.” A 4:1 majority thinks that weighing the costs and benefits, “this would be a desirable policy.” I note […]

Here’s what risk looks like: Having to tell your six-year-old son that you don’t have a birthday present for him because you didn’t have any money left after buying food for the week. Telling your daughter she has to attend the semi-shitty local community college instead of the awesome out-of-state school where she was accepted […]

If there’s one thing that distinguishes modeling by mainstream and neoclassical economists — and that is arguably their Achilles Heel — it’s their failure to come at the problem from a fundamental accounting, and monetary, standpoint. (That failure is understandable given the curricula in economics departments.) I know that many of my readers share with […]

Contrary to what you might think, this new survey says that 69% of Republicans think that climate change is a “somewhat” or “very” serious threat. Table 3. Perception that climate change is a threat among Democrats (N=377), Republicans (N=306), Independents (N=389), and overall U.S. population (N=1089) in January 2013. Columns may not add to 100 […]

We saw it on the “fiscal cliff”: enough House Republicans voted for the deal, along with most Democrats, to get something passed. Republicans backed down on the debt ceiling. On immigration, we’re also seeing the two parties working together to craft a solution. This feels like a possible sea change. Should Obama get credit? He’s […]

These local stories in Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and North Carolina speak quite eloquently for themselves. Gov. Bobby Jindal is proposing to eliminate Louisiana’s income and corporate taxes and pay for those cuts with increased sales taxes http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/01/gov_bobby_jindal_calls_for_eli.html Gov. Dave Heineman made a bold proposal … end the income tax for working Nebraskans and corporations. It […]

J.W. Mason at The Slack Wire gives us a telling and trenchant analysis of that question: Short answer: They used to, but not any more. The correlation in the U.S. between fixed-capital investment and a) debt levels and b) change in debt levels has been vanishingly small since the late eighties. …in the 1960s and […]

And Kevin Drum disappoints in his own defense. Regular readers will know that (at least sometimes) I like to seek out and highlight the very best, most cogent and convincing arguments countering my beliefs, trying to figure out what might be wrong with those beliefs, and hoping to understand what’s really going with the subject […]

I’ve long been troubled by a Paul Krugman comment from 2008: There’s no obvious reason why consumer demand can’t be sustained by the spending of the upper class — $200 dinners and luxury hotels create jobs, the same way that fast food dinners and Motel 6s do. And I find in his concluding comment from […]

Steve Randy Waldman as usual gets practical about Treasury issuing platinum coins. JKH in comments there does typically likewise. Suppose the Department of the Treasury says: “We have a statutory obligation to pay all amounts that have been authorized by Congress — both expenditure and debt obligations. Since the borrowing limit has been reached and […]