Most of our unemployment problem stems from overregulation, over-taxation and the Obama economy. — Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), Monday Which is why we should deregulate the financial-services industry and reduce income taxes to resemble the good ole days of the George W. Bush administration. Let’s restore the economy to its glory days: say, 2008-09.  And […]

Salon offers an article on expectations for public sector pensions. Given the demise of many private pension plans and the lackluster performance of 401ks for many people, what’s next?

by David Zetland from Aguanomics: Recycle reuse reduce? When it comes to consumer goods, reduce-reuse-recycle makes lots of sense. Don’t buy that bike if you’re not going to use it. If you are going to use it, then reuse a used one. Once you’re done using it, recycle it instead of dumping it into a […]

Via Huffington Post Elizabeth Warren’s letter to Attorney General Holder on “timid enforcement strategy” of the DOJ concerning monetary penalties, admissions of wrongdoing, and clearer signals regulators are attending to the public good. (Excerpts under the fold)

by Linda Beale The Elderly May Not Be As Taxing As Generally Thought One of the common assumptions about health care costs (and the costs of benefit programs like Medicare) has been that the increasing life spans of Americans will result in significantly greater health care expenses.  It is common knowledge that much of the […]

by David Zetland  Local versus regional control In response to this: “The public sector is often better at handling inter-agency cooperation and the private sector is often better at delivering cost-effective, measured results. In either case, the local government plays the most important role as it needs to oversee and regulate all players. Poor regulation […]

From Social Europe Journal comes more analysis of using Ireland as the standard success story for austerity (re-posted with permisson from the author and SEJ): Can Spain Achieve What Ireland And Latvia Did? BY RONALD JANSSEN Advice from a ‘very serious European’. Picking up on the IMF’s report on the Spanish economy and its call […]

Paul Krugman points to Angry Bear Kenneth Thomas in this piece in the New York Times on the use of Ireland as somehow a success story of what are failed policies regarding employment: Ireland Is The Success Story Of The Future, And Always Will Be Via Mark Thoma, Kenneth Thomas analyzes the latest attempt to […]

by Linda Beale The Tea Party’s Disruptive Anti-Government (and anti-tax) Politics The New York Times ran an interesting piece by Kim Messick on the Tea Party’s psyche yesterday: Messick, The Tea Party’s Paranoid Aesthetic, New York Times (Aug. 10, 2013).  It’s worth trying to understand this political group’s understanding of itself, since it ” is […]

Brad DeLong adds his voice to the people addressing the retirement woes of many: Edward Filene’s idea from the 1920s of having companies run employer-sponsored defined-benefit plans has, by and large, come a-crashing down. Companies turn out not to be long-lived enough to run pensions with a high enough probability. And when they are there […]