Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Macro policies on the economy…

Sometimes comments at Angry Bear and other sites get to resemble an exchange of slogans, statements of faith on particular macro economic policies using tax cuts and government spending as political stimulus rather than economic, and proof of validity premised on how forceful one is. At one time or another we all fall into that […]

Are economist’s rational?

I just couldn’t skip this one…disinhibition and odd “metaphor” combined: Lynn Parramour writes:   Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, two economists who have tried to expose the problems in their field, remind us that even when you look at the evidence of recent reports of the trustees overseeing […]

Basic v. Levinson

From the New York Times According to the plaintiffs in the new case, the Supreme Court has not overruled a statutory precedent in an area in which Congress has been active since 1961, in a tax case. But lawyers for the defendants said the 1988 decision was entitled to “lessened precedential weight” because it was […]

The Conservative Case for a Minimum Wage Hike

Most conservatives disparage minimum-wage laws with straightforward economic reasoning, based on Econ 101 textbook theory: demand curves slope down. If you institute a price floor, raising the price of labor, you’ll get less labor demanded — less jobs. This hurts poor people, especially entry-level folks like teenagers. At first blush, the argument’s got legs. And […]

Why No Social Security Posts on Angry Bear?

Because we won. Or more precisely I won. Because we are not that much closer to the adoption of the Coberly inspired Northwest Plan than before, despite the fact that similar plans poll spectacularly positive. But mostly all the ‘Reform’ plans for an ‘unsustainable’ Social Security system are running scared from the Senator Warren and […]

Paul Krugman vs. … um … me. [Updated.]

No, no; of course, I don’t mean that Paul Krugman has expressly disputed something I wrote here on AB.  Or that he has ever read a post of mine.  Or that he knows that I exist.  Those latter two things have happened, but only in my dreams. The first of those has never happened at […]

Plain vanilla banking

Elizabeth Warren proposes simple banking needs through the Post Office: According to a report put out this week by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service, about 68 million Americans — more than a quarter of all households — have no checking or savings account and are underserved by the […]

Does Upward Redistribution Cause Secular Stagnation?

A while back I built a  model to look at the long-term economic effects of upward and downward redistribution. Posts here and here. Commenter JGF pointed out an error in the model. I’ve revised and corrected it. The spreadsheet’s here. The model is based on marginal propensities to spend out of wealth and income. Poor people […]

Time to end redistribution upwards: minimum wage increases would boost economy and lift all boats

by Linda Beale Time to end redistribution upwards: minimum wage increases would boost economy and lift all boats. No matter how much the business lobby complains about the “business costs” of increasing the minimum wage, legislators should look past that self-serving ideology and look at reality.  Workers have contributed to increased productivity but received a […]