The asterisk in real median household income This is a follow-up to the post I wrote last week about the latest data on real median household income. One of the things I notes is that “households” includes the millions that are composed of retirees, a burgeoning demographic due both to healthier longevities and the demographics […]
Via the Guardian comes this note from well funded groups: Conservative campaign aims to strike ‘mortal blow’ on government unions ‘A once-in-a-lifetime chance to reverse the failed policies of the American left’
byPeter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Carbon Gridlock Redux in Washington State A year ago—it already seems like another era—an initiative to set up a carbon tax in Washington State, I-732, was defeated by the voters. The proposal was to use the money for tax reductions in accordance with the standard economic view that taxing […]
Obamacare Could Die We are at this very odd moment now. We thought ACA was saved by a narrow vote some months ago, when John McCain joined Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to block the last version of Trumpcare. Whew! No need to worry about millions of people having their health insurance taken away! Time […]
by ProGrowthLiberal (originally published at Econospeak) Does Single Payer Pay for Itself? Was this the message of the title of the latest from Dean Baker: The economies of a single system can be viewed as analogous to the Social Security system, which has administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as much as privatized systems […]
Guest Author: Alan Collinge, StudentLoanJustice.Org,Both Alan and I have written various posts on the student loan crisis. Alan has been featured on Angry Bear Blog from time to time. If you are in college and looking for something worthy to fight for today; as a student, you should consider the student loan issue. Student loans […]
How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps Here’s Kevin Drum advocating for step 1: the best way to address retirement security is to continue reforming 401(k) plans and to expand Social Security—but only for low-income workers. Middle-class workers are generally doing reasonably well, and certainly as well as they did in the past. We don’t […]
Via Alternet: Why a Case Against a Dark Money Charter School Group Is Great News for Democracy Billionaire charter school backers in Massachusetts wanted their identities kept secret. In one of the most important decisions ever about dark money in politics, a Massachusetts charter school advocacy group has been ordered to make the names of […]
Dan here…a reminder about our federal deficit. Deficits Do Matter, But Not the Way You Think 07.20.10 Roosevelt institute L. Randall Wray In recent months, a form of mass hysteria has swept the country as fear of “unsustainable” budget deficits replaced the earlier concern about the financial crisis, job loss, and collapsing home prices. What […]
Hurricane adjusted initial claims for week of Sept. 2: 239,000 Last week I promised I would repeat an exercise I first undertook in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy disrupted the initial claims data: estimating what the initial jobless claims would have been, but for the hurricane. In 2012 I created that adjustment by backing out the […]