by Linda Beale the right’s smoke & mirrors scams about corporate tax “reform” One could get a pretty gloomy picture of the state of Social Security, and the need to “reduce entitlements” while at the same time hearing about the (faked) urgency of cutting corporate taxes in order to give our US multinationals an edge […]
The employment report showed little evidence that the trends of the past year have changed.Over the past three months private payroll employment grew some 72,000, 191,000 and 104,000while government employment fell 132,000, 33,000 and 24,000. The one encouraging signs was the third strong month of employment growth reported in the household survey. Over the last […]
By Rebecca Wilder Worries About Italy: Growth and Politics< Current bond market pricing implies a 6.17% yield on a 10-yr Italian government bond, or 430 basis points (%/100) over a like German government bond. I’d call this distressed levels for Italian debt, especially for an economy that is very likely contracting as we speak. Today […]
by Mike Kimel The Kimel Curve and the Kitchen Sink, Part 2: The Reagan Era to the Present I often post about the relationship between the top marginal tax rate and economic growth, which I’ve noted can be described this way: % change in real GDP from t to t+1 = a + b*Top Marginal […]
Michael Pettis reminds us part of the political conversation is pretty much missing from the election cycles of the last fifteen years except in the rather lightly noted passage of ‘trade treaties’. (Another post is needed for the most recent three examples…). Last week’s Senate bill on Chinese currency intervention predictably enough brought out all […]
Angry Bear archives reminds us of the longstanding strategies embedded in the current political debate, and trial balloons of possible current Super Committee proposals November 22, 2011. The Social Security surplus as a significant amount of money is recent, in the last fifteen years or so: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 Three-Card Monte Following up on […]
by Linda Beale Inequality–the facts speak for themselves (don’t listen to the apologists on the right) Inequality is real, and it is growing. It is debilitating for democratic institutions, as the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case and its aftermath start to impact the federal elections and as the money from the Koch brothers, Walton heirs […]
By Rebecca Wilder Baby Steps In the FT today, Martin Wolf discusses the symbiotic relationship of global creditors and debtors. According to the September 2011 IMF World Economic Outlook, China ran the largest current account surplus in 2007, while the US ran the largest current account deficit (in $). Well, if this creditor-debtor relationship is […]
Derek Thompson at The Atlantic had some thoughts on labor cost and economics taken from Henry Blodgett’s observation on declining wages for most wage earners. The second paragraph caught my eye as interesting for economists. My response was that Blodget was macro-right — income inequality is a serious and growing problem — but micro-wrong, because […]
by Linda Beale Beale debates Cato’s Edwards on the right’s “flat tax”–New Hampshire Public Radio Last Wednesday (Oct. 26, 2011), I debated the Cato Institute’s tax policy guru Chris Edwards about the right’s various “flat tax” (FairTax, 9-9-9, USA Tax, consumption tax) proposals, on New Hampshire’s public radio station’s hour long program “The Exchange”, hosted […]