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 […]
Hurricane workarounds for industrial production and housing Hurricane Harvey has already affected some of the August data releases. Irma has already started to affect some weekly releases, and will undoubtedly affect the September monthly releases. I have already begun to adjust for the hurricanes in the case of initial jobless claims. But what of the […]
2.5 cheers for 2016’s new high in real median household income! Given that I consider jobs and wages for average Americans my #1 focus, it’s only fair that I write about this week’s release of the real median household income for 2016, don’t you think? A few years ago I wrote that real median household […]
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 […]
by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Price Gouging Whenever there’s a natural disaster, a famine or some other such crisis, people zero in on price gouging. Are grain merchants jacking up prices to take advantage of a food shortage? What about airlines raising fares to cash in on desperate attempts to flee an impending hurricane, […]
WHO OWNS THE WEALTH IN TAX HAVENS?, an NBER working paper, points to following the money: Drawing on newly published macroeconomic statistics, this paper estimates the amount of household wealth owned by each country in offshore tax havens. The equivalent of 10% of world GDP is held in tax havens globally, but this average masks […]
It Is Monday, And WaPo Bashes Social Security Again What a surprise, the Washington Post is at it again, and it is the usual culprit, Robert J. Samuelson. Of course he has his attack buried under a title that appears to point more broadly, “The deficit is everybody’s fault,” although not if “everybody” includes people […]
“If you tax investment income what will people do? Stuff their money in the mattress?” Steve Roth | October 15, 2012 9:25 pm Richard Thaler asks exactly the right question. This from the latest IGM Forum poll of big-name economists, on the effects of taxing income from “capital.” I’ve been over this multiple times before, […]
A note on Hurricane Harvey and unemployment claims Initial jobless claims for last week were reported at 298,000 this morning, a jump of over 50,000 from recent levels. As most people probably already know, this huge jump had everything to do with Hurricane Harvey shutting down southeastern Texas, including the entire 7 million Houston metro […]