by New Deal democrat Would the real “real median household income” please stand up? Real median household income is among the most important measures of economic well-being. So why do three surveys compiled from 3 different sources give 3 very different results? Let me point out initially what real median household income is NOT. It […]
This post is related to the debate about fiscal policy and medium run growth which has become entangled with the Sanders or Clinton debate (which I will attempt to avoid). Some extremely Keynesian economists (DeLong, Pro Growth Liberal,, Menzie Chin, Paul Krugman, and (warning pdf) C and D Romer have expressed skepticism about the possibility […]
by Peter Dorman (from Econospeak) The Lesson of Carrier: America Needs a Real Socialist Agenda I just finished listening to the video clip that has been making the rounds, in which a spokesman announces to the assembled workers at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis that their jobs will be moved to Mexico. It’s embedded in […]
by Kenneth Thomas New OECD tax agreement improves transparency — but the US doesn’t sign and the US press won’t tell you UPDATED Last week 31 countries signed a new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agreement providing for country-by-country corporate information reporting and the automatic exchange of tax info between countries under the […]
by Linda Beale Should simplicity be a primary goal of tax reform? I was at a housewarming party last Saturday and talked to quite a few people I didn’t know. One was an economics professor at a regional school. Naturally, economists and tax professors gravitate towards talk about the economy and tax policies, so it […]
by New Deal democrat Consumer Expenditures Survey: incomes rose sharply from June 2014-June 2015 A major piece of data came out last week that has been totally unreported in the media and econoblogosphere: the Consumer Expenditures Survey (CES) for June 2014- June 2015. This is the first CES report to include the period of rapidly […]
by Kenneth Thomas Breakthrough in Kansas-Missouri Border War Via @goodjobsfirst, we learned Friday that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback had made a major response to Missouri’s proposed jobs truce in the Kansas City region. As regular readers may recall, studies have shown that more than $200 million has been spent moving jobs back and forth across […]
by New Deal democrat The best measure of labor market recoveries: March 2016 update In my opinion the best measure of how average Americans are doing in an economic expansion isn’t jobs, and it isn’t wages per hour. Rather, it is real aggregate wage growth. This is calculated as follows: average wages per hour for […]
– by New Deal democrat The new parsimony I came across the below graph showing that relationship of average household net worth with average debt vs. the personal savings rate from the NY Fed last week (h/t The Conversable Economist): The important point was that the relationship has changed since the Great Recession. Even though […]
by Joseph Joyce The People’s Verdict on Globalization The similarities in the electoral appeals of businessman Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders have been widely noted (see, for example, here, here and here). Both men attract voters who feel trapped in their economic status, unable to make progress either for themselves or their children. Moreover, […]