Suzy Khimm, Kevin Drum and Greg Sargent comment on the series of gallup polls dating back to 1992 in which a solid majority of US adults, ranging from 55% to 77%, say that they think the rich pay less than their fair share of taxes. Please click the link to Drum then come back. I […]
by Mike Kimel What is the Question? Responding to Paul Krugman Paul Krugman has been kind enough to respond to my post which in turn was commenting on an earlier post he had written. As I noted in my previous post, I’m very leery about writing this, given Prof. Krugman is usually a very perceptive […]
If past file conventions hold true these links should work immediately on release of the 2012 Social Security and Medicare Reports Monday morning. This link SHOULD get you to the CURRENT summary. Which means 2011 until it means 2012. When it does. Social Security and Medicare Summary Report BTW from all evidence 99% of all […]
The first link is to the 2011 Report and is meant as a teaching tool. The Table shows projected income, cost, and balance projections over what the Trustees consider the ‘short term’, which is the same ten years used by OMB and CBO in their scoring. Table IV.A3.—Operations of the Combined OASI and DI Trust […]
Okay. The subtitle of this post is a loose paraphrase of statements that Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom made to ABC News on Thursday. But not all that loose a paraphrase. It’s actually a direct deduction from Fehrnstrom’s comments. As Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent mentioned on Friday, Fehrnstrom test-drove a new, or rather a newly […]
by Kenneth Thomas of Middle Class Political Economy Greg Mankiw doesn’t understand competition for investment Greg Mankiw’s column in Sunday’s New York Times makes the case that competition between governments is a good thing, that it makes them more efficient in the same way that competition among firms does. He paints it as also being […]
You know things are weird when pretty strongly right-of-center economists are proposing ideas first touted by MMT econocranks (yes, beowulf, I’m talking about you) to bring about the Obama breakout moment that progressives (despairingly) dream of at night. The world is a very strange place. And people argue with Steve Randy Waldman when he says […]
Speaking of “extractive elites,” don’t miss Pete Kotz’s cover story in the Village Voice, Mitt Romney, American Parasite. (I read it in their subsidiary Seattle Weekly.) It details a whole string of Bain purchases under Romney — thriving companies that were saddled with debt so Romney could extract cash in the form of “profits,” leaving […]
It’s pretty amazing to read a cover story in, and by the publisher of, The American Conservative that could have run in The Nation, Mother Jones, or on Daily Kos — almost. Certainly America’s top engineers and entrepreneurs have created many of the world’s most important technologies, sometimes becoming enormously wealthy in the process. But […]
by Mike Kimel Update …Since this post has gotten a lot of attention, jump here for myfinal word on this topic. I’m sure I’m missing something here, because Paul Krugman is so often extremely perceptive, but I think here he is very, very wrong. He writes: The naive (or deliberately misleading) version of Fed policy […]