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

Loser Liberalism

By Dean Baker (2011) Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to […]

Odds and Ends

Hat Tip Digsby and Kos Cartoons “Supreme Court Chooses Religion Over Science” In a footnote, Justice Alito concedes that Hobby Lobby’s religious-based assertions are contradicted by science-based federal regulations: “The owners of the companies involved in these cases and others who believe that life begins at conception regard these four methods as causing abortions, but […]

Falling Labor Demand

I have had a series of posts (one, two)  in response to Simon Wren-Lewis‘ post on an aggregate demand constraint. My posts give another version of his model which puts real wages on the y-axis and Qty labor employed on the x-axis. I put labor share on the y-axis and employment rate on the x-axis. […]

Ideal Labor Share to max Employment… message to the Fed

This post is a message to the Federal Reserve if they are serious about maximizing employment. Yesterday I posted a model for labor share plotted against labor (Qty.) in response to a post by Simon Wren-Lewis. The model suggests that there is an ideal level of labor share that will employ the most amount of […]

The 2015 Analytical Perspectives: OMB vs SSA vs CBO

The Office of Management and Budget annually releases the President’s Budget as a baseline proposal for the next Fiscal Year. If the Congress is in whole or in part in the hands of the opposite party this mostly gets filed away somewhere in a drawer entitled “You Wish”. But it does come complete with a […]

Effective Demand and the Labor Market… response to Simon Wren-Lewis

Simon Wren-Lewis wrote about Aggregate Demand and the Labour Market. He shows that an aggregate demand constraint can keep employment from reaching its natural rate. He is essentially describing Keynes’ effective demand in his post. So I have made 2 changes to his title in the title of this post. I have changed aggregate demand […]