by Martin Ford Job Automation, Purchasing Power and Consumer Spending I’ve had several recent posts here arguing that automation technology is likely to depress wages and lead to significant structural unemployment in the coming years. One of the most common criticisms of my argument is that I am “not thinking like an economist” and that […]
Not only did the U.S. Treasury just sell $29 Billion worth of four-week bills at par (i.e., they got $29 Billion for them, and will return $29 Billion on 29 December), but the bid to cover ratio was over 5:1 (pdf link; had $154B in bids for $29B in securities). This is down 0.06% from […]
Remember the argument that we shouldn’t tax people because they’ll just move elsewhere? The British government appears not to believe it. Will the Geithner/Summers axis continue lying that “we can’t do that”? Since it really is a Windfall Profit, taxing it seems a reasonable idea. And now we won’t even be able to pretend that […]
NYT headline: Audit Finds TARP Program Effective. Paragraph six of the same article: The Treasury’s lack of clarity about the program’s goals, the oversight panel said, made it hard to assess its overall effectiveness. Mr. Geithner is scheduled to testify on Thursday in his quarterly appearance before the five-member panel. [emphasis mine] Clearly. one of […]
by Linda Beale(cross posted at ataxingmatter) One can question the timing of implementation, but can one argue against the financing? …Rdan War taxes? Since Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001 (and then, Iraq), we have been paying for war as an afterthought. In the Bush era attempt to treat war as something that happened “over there” […]
So the Sen Ten have reached a secret deal. The main points seem to be that the public option is replaced by an sub – exchange of private non profit insurers (which is very close to nothing at all) and people from 55 to 65 can buy into Medicare. I was going to give a […]
Robert Waldmann Has a thought about how to get votes for a cap and trade bill in the Senate without giving a windfall to incumbent polluters. The problem is that it seems to be necessary to buy the votes of coal state legislators. The House’s solution is to give C02 permits to current polluters. This […]
Russ Roberts could at least pretend that Amity Shlaes (B.A., English Literature) had written a book related to economics, no matter how badly contrived and poorly researched it was. But what’s his excuse for this (B.A., English Literature, Penn; MBA Chicago)? Sadly, it appears he has stopped even pretending to be interested in economics, and […]
by cactus Comparing Presidents – Real GDP per Capita, late 2009 edition Every so often I find I have to rewrite a post about how well Presidents have done at producing economic growth. See, over time, we get new readers, and some of the, based on what I read in comments or in e-mails I […]