Last week I was browsing through one of the books on the shelf at work, which had in it three essays by the inter-war German Marxist Karl Korsch. One of the essays, a 1932 introduction to Capital mentioned mentioned a section in Chapter 24, “The So-Called Labour Fund” as exemplary of Marx’s critique of political […]
There has been a bit of commotion recently about the Job Guarantee idea (AKA employer of last resort). I don’t consider myself an opponent of the strategy but I do have several reservations about its political feasibility, the marketing rhetoric of its advocates, and its economic and administrative transparency. Some of these concerns I share […]
I’m teaching “Economics for Non-Economists” this semester. This is an interesting experiment, and is strongly testing my belief that you can teach economics without mathematics so long as people understand graphs and tables. (It appears that people primarily learn how to read graphs and tables in mathematics-related courses. Did everyone except me know this?) Since […]
(Dan here…Social Security is an issue that seems to generate a lot of firm beliefs and passion, as witness recent threads. It is rare that people refer to actuary material. On the other sides of the issue are people like Andrew Biggs, who is knowledgeable and smart in his arguments. I am posting this as […]
AARP notes a planned reduction in Medicare funding. I have not hear much from them as in times past. If you read through the umpteen pages of the Senate tax bill, you won’t find a clause that says it dramatically cuts Medicare spending. But the effect of the legislation being debated this week would be […]
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 […]
by Dale Coberly FIX THE DEBT WANTS TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY BUT WHY? I received an email a few days ago from Chris Dreibelbis, Fix the Debt, purporting to explain “why the Social Security Trustees urge action.” “Fix the Debt” is a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) which is funded […]
Lifted from comments by Dale Coberly… This year’s Social Security Trustees Report seems to be late as usual. But this is the LAST year that a gradual increase in the payroll tax can begin and still solve some of the less understood problems of the projected shortfall in SS funding: This is mostly that a […]
Recently I discussed a paper by David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu. The paper noted that as competition from China increased, innovation by US firms, measured by patent output, decreased. I believe the result, but started to wonder… are patents a good measure of innovation? Do patents drive economic growth? […]
In 2026, an estimated 52 million would be uninsured in the US, a dramatic reversal from the 2016 uninsured count of 28/29 million. Pretty much, the Republicans will put healthcare back to the way it was pre-2014 if Paul Ryan’s bill is passed by Congress and Donald signs the bill in its present form. – […]