Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

What is the GOP goal? A return to the “gilded age” (or worse)

What is the GOP goal? A return to the “gilded age” (or worse) When right-wing Roy Moore said that the time when America was great was during slavery, he revealed something key to the current GOP members of Congress and state legislatures–their primary goal is to return to a time when owners of property held […]

The Poland Peoblem: How A Good Economy Does Not Guarantee A Good Politics

The Poland Peoblem: How A Good Economy Does Not Guarantee A Good Politics This is personal and professional.  My wife and I have the third edition of our comparative economics textbook now in press at MIT Press.  We have chapters on transition economies, and one is on  the Polish economy.  The standard story is that Poland has been […]

All I Want for Christmas is No Bombing

Its almost Christmas.  What seems to be different in the last couple of years is that we now have to contend with the joy of violent Christmas plots of one sort or another.  Just the other day, some $#%& with a scheme to shoot up San Francisco for the holidays was arrested.  Not that the […]

GDP: Falling Short

by Diane Coyle,  Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, GDP: Falling Short  (from IMF website here ) Gross domestic product, or GDP, has been used to measure growth since the Second World War when economies were all about mass production and manufacturing. In this podcast, economist Diane Coyle, says […]

Tax Rates v. Real GDP Growth Rates

by Mike Kimel   (from 2012) Tax Rates v. Real GDP Growth Rates, a Scatter Plot   This post was submitted by Kaleberg. In this post, I will look at the relationship between top marginal income tax rates and real GDP growth using a scatter plot. I am inordinately fond of scatter plots. The nice thing about […]

Why Would Anybody Invest When Capacity Utilization is This Low?

by Hale Stewart  (originally published at Bonddad blog) Why Would Anybody Invest When Capacity Utilization is This Low? A central selling point of the tax bill is that it will encourage investment.  But that assumes that high tax rates were the primary reason why business wasn’t investing.  Instead, the data says business investment is weak because […]

GOP Congress: my (wealthy) donors made me do it

GOP Congress: my (wealthy) donors made me do it The GOP’s tax-complicating, deficit-increasing, wealthy-subsidizing, Arctic destroying, Health Care damaging, $1.5 trillion tax “reform” package is unpopular with most Americans, destructive to the government’s ability to fund needed programs from disease prevention to FEMA to basic research to needed infrastructure improvements, and wildly popular with the […]

Black Mirror Big Data Becomes Big Brother In China

Black Mirror Big Data Becomes Big Brother In China And maybe coming soon to the US as well, enough to make Orwell sit up and take notice. The first show of the 2016 season of the sci fi TV show, “Black Mirror,” called “Nosedive,” showed a future society where people have overall social scores (1-5) […]