by Bruce Webb The latest Republican talking point, promoted among others by Chuck Grassley this morning, is that proposed cuts to Medicare make its financial situation more precarious. Why cut $500 billion if Medicare is already in trouble? This is totally backwards and shows a total unawareness of how Medicare is financed. So lets review: […]
Robert Waldmann Don’t kill the guy who writes headlines for www.washingtonpost.com. Nonviolence. First amendment. Free press. Don’t do it. I have already complained about another headline today, but I must admit that “Stagnant Prices Prevent Social Security Increase” totally leaves “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, CBO Chief Says” in the dust. OK so now the inflation […]
rdan Dean Baker suggests an intriguing innovation to competition in healthcare: While health care may at first blush not seem suitable for international trade, since the delivery is place specific, on closer inspection there are ways that the United States could benefit from the more efficient health care systems of other countries. The most obvious […]
by Gavin Kennedy(cross posted from Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy) Identify the Invisible Hand! Alex Tabarrok writes on the Nobel Prize for Oliver Williamson in an article on the Marginal Revolution Blog “Oliver Williamson and the pin factory”, which is fine but it contains the following paragraph: “Transaction cost economics is all about applying these ideas […]
Robert Waldmann has definitely not been spending enough time in bars. Nation food correspondent Calvin Trillin met a guy in a bar who explained why the financial system collapsed.I nominate some guy in a bar for the Nobel memorial prize in economics. The explanation ? “The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys […]
Robert Waldmann Doug Elmendorf says that the costs of cap and trade will be miniscule and does not try to estimate the benefits. Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post demonstrates that she is the second most innumerate person on the planat, the most innumerate is the** guy who wrote the headline “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, […]
by cactus I live in a city of with less than a quarter million people. (The greater metropolitan area is larger, of course – there are well over half a million people in the surrounding area.) Since we moved here a year and change ago, its hard to avoid noticing that in this city, politics […]
by Linda Beale A Year and Counting: re-regulation of Wall Street On Monday night, I participated in a symposium on the Financial Crisis: One Year Later, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Citizenship and others. With me were Larry Ingrassia, Business Editor of the New York Times, and Chip Dickson, CFO of W2Freedom, […]
by Bruce Webb Key Senate committee passes health care plan The Senate Finance Committee passed a long-awaited $829 billion health care bill Tuesday by a 14-9 vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was the lone committee member to cross party lines, breaking with other Republicans to vote for the measure. All the committee’s Democrats supported the […]