David Zetland passes along some income figures via Aguanomics (re posted). (Dan here…There are more American billionaires and millionaires, so not to worry) : Cornelia and I were discussing household income and living standards, and I mentioned that median wages in the US were around $35,000.* She was shocked, saying that they were much higher […]
In the Vice Presidential debate Ryan said that the Kennedy tax cuts generated so much growth that tax receipts increased enough to offset the revenue losses. When I look at the data it sure looks like this claim is another one of his Any Rand fantasies. The economy did grow rapidly after the Kennedy tax […]
Biden’s use of the famous Lloyd Bentsen put-down of Dan Quail—“Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”—is getting pretty good play among the punditry. (Yay!) Now, hopefully, Obama and Biden will educate the public about the tax rates on the wealthy and on capital gains in, say, 1963. And on whether, y’know, America was a European-style socialist […]
Not surprisingly, the pundits have concluded that, while the debate last night will stop the bleeding for the Dem ticket—stop the momentum for Romney/Ryan—it won’t make a difference beyond that. People don’t vote for the vice presidential candidate; they vote for, or against, a presidential candidate. And anyway, Biden smiled too much! And Ryan was […]
To err is human to persevere is diabolical. ORC and CNN have done it again. Delighted by the success of their instant poll on the Presidential debate, they did an identical poll of the Vice Presidential debate. They report results for a sample of 381 (is that the smallest sample ever for a national poll […]
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by Kenneth Thomas New Model Legislation Would be Great First Step Toward Subsidy Reform Yesterday, Good Jobs First released new model legislation to increase the transparency, accountability, and effectiveness of state and local subsidies, which I estimate to total $70 billion per year. If states were to adopt these laws, subsidy administration would improve dramatically, […]
And a debate is a perfect place to spit out numbers and plan names without a moderator fact-checking you. — Paul Ryan’s Word Salad, David Weigel, Slate, today Indeed. I was absolutely dumbfounded to read yesterday that the MSM is now buying Lehrer’s idea of what a debate should be. Do they not understand that […]
Art at The New Arthurian Economics and I are looking at the relationship between debt and economic growth. Art started with an observation of two FRED series, total credit market debt owed (TCMDO) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP, nominal or GDPC1, inflation adjusted – take your pick.) Graph 1, from FRED, shows these data series. […]