Lawrence Kudlow once again is guilty of either stupidity or mendacity (or both) as misrepresents a speech by Ben Bernanke: It’s always amazing to listen to conventional demand-side economic pundits and mainstream reporters who try as hard as they can to minimize the excellent performance of the American economy ever since lower marginal tax-rate incentives […]
Andrew Sullivan attacks Paul Krugman (hat tip to Mark Thoma) in such an utterly disingenuous way that is receiving some well deserved scorn. Krugman writes: According to this view, if you’re a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that “the administration lies about budget numbers,” you’re a […]
The Employment Situation Summary for February shows that nonfarm payroll employment grew by 243,000 – so why did the unemployment rate rise to 4.8%? The Household Survey indicated a 183,000 increase in employment, which meant that the employment to population ratio remained at 62.9%. The civilian labor force grew by 335,000, which bumped the labor […]
Kash notes that this week’s Econoblog addressed income inequality, which has been rising over the past couple of decades: Russell is right that absolute standards of living matter. But I think that he failed to address Boushey’s point (which is fairly widely accepted by economists) that relative success matters to people, too. Understanding the causes […]
This week’s Econoblog from the WSJ is about income inequality. Heather Boushey is alarmed by the rise in inequality over the past couple of decades: Over the past 30 years, we have seen inequality rise along all three dimensions — wages, incomes and wealth — and it shows no signs of slowing. As a result, […]
Let me just add my two cents to what PGL just wrote about whether Reagan was really a small-government conservative, and to what degree Bush has betrayed that legacy. To start with, let me repost a picture that I like from an old post entitled “Spending Growth in Context“: Firstly, I would agree that Reagan […]
Mallory Factor condones political pandering over leadership: Americans do not want higher taxes … Most Democrats in Congress are ignoring the two-thirds of their constituents who want tax rates to stay where they are, voting consistently to raise taxes and using the procedural mechanism of the filibuster to keep automatic rate hikes looming over American […]
Brad Setser objects to the following from Sebastian Mallaby: There’s a powerful reason for China’s recalcitrance. The country’s technocrats were convinced years ago that revaluation made economic sense. But revaluation would cut the price of food imports, depressing earnings of Chinese farmers. Faced with simmering discontent among rural Chinese who have been left behind by […]
The “M3” measure of money is almost gone. At least, it’s probably almost gone. Its last publication is due to happen on March 23, which means that M3-related reporting requirements for financial firms end this week. However, there remains an outside chance that Congressional interference could yet scuttle the Fed’s plan to terminate the M3 […]
George Will has decided the former Senator John Edwards has an old paradigm of what causes poverty in America: Edwards has a 1930s paradigm of poverty: Poor people are like everyone else; they just lack goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence he calls for a higher minimum […]