The reliably brilliant Catharine Rampell argues against giving $1400 to quite so many people. She notes The Democratic-controlled House passed legislation in December to expand stimulus payments to $2,000. This was marketed as aid to the poor and middle class, but the bill would have given some money to 94 percent of households — including those making over […]

Upward trend confirmed in new jobless claims On a unadjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 101,498 to 873,966. Seasonally adjusted claims also declined by 67,000 to 847,000. The 4 week moving average, however, rose by 16,250 to 868,000. Since the 4 week average has risen above 850,000, and weekly claims were above 900,000 for […]

There are those who always raise the issue of “I paid for mine, you pay for yours. I know of no other debt created by borrowing money where the penalty is a life time of servitude and the means of retirement in Social Security is also attached too. Principal remains untouched and whatever money paid […]

Is Biden Going To Blow Reentering The Iran Nuclear Deal? I certainly hope not, but it is not out of the question.  There is a serious split within the new Biden administration over how to approach getting the US back into the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, which, just for the record, the US withdrew […]

Fifth and last. Not relevant to the USA. Back in the day when US unions weren’t totally feeble, MacDonald and Solow wrote a brilliant paper on collective bargaining and tax based incomes policy. Imagine a world in which firms must negotiation with unions (for example imagine Europe). The unions have two aims — they want […]

A detailed, updated look at the housing market Existing home sales for December were reported this morning at 6.76 million annualized, just below the October 10 Year+ high of 6.86 million. Although existing home sales are about 90% of the entire housing market, they are less important economically than new housing construction, which has multiplier […]

Why Has AMLO Delayed Congratulating Biden On His Inauguration?  Maybe he has now done it, although I have been unable to find any reports of him doing so.  But almost alone among world leaders, I think joined only by Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Mexicos’s President known as “AMLO” did not basically immediately congratulate […]

From now on, these posts will be reviews of the established literature. I will assume, as is standard, that people are completely selfish. The point is to show that, even if people are selfish, there are desirable incentive effects of income taxation. As is often the case, the results of 50 year old theory turn […]

Initial jobless claims: still elevated compared with several months ago, another negative jobs report for January a possibility Initial jobless claims this week came within a hair of meeting my criteria for a change to an upward trend.  On a unadjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 151,303 to 960,668. Seasonally adjusted claims also declined […]

(Better late than never…Dan) This is a really slow news week – on the economy!  My retrospective on the Trump Presidency is nearly complete and will be published tomorrow morning. In the meantime, here is a brief note on the Small Business Optimism index which was updated for December last week, showing a steep decline […]