This story should be a lot better known than it is. That, and that Blumlein is too nice a person, because it’s the 1986 Tax Reorganization that destroyed the future.

by Linda Beale Tax Patentscrossposted with Ataxingmatter The Senate Judiciary Committee did a markup of its patent reform legislation (S.23) today (Feb. 3, 2011) and –in a unanimous vote– sent it to the floor of the Senate with the broad ban on the patenting of tax strategies intact. The accounting group AICPA has been leading […]

Readers have noticed and commented on the abrupt change in the commenting format last week. Angry Bear’s discounted subscription to echo pro expired and became echo live, which is geared to a social networking format (links to twitter and facebook and other perks). Echo pro costs $100/month minimum for companies with 1 M pageviews a […]

I’ll forward you to Spencer’s post on the January Employment report. As always, he sifts through this massive report and eloquently describes the state of the labor market. But I thought that I’d add a bit on the disparity between the household survey and the establishment survey. The annual population revisions and weather distortions have […]

Signs of stronger growth are showing almost everwhere but the employment data. In January payroll employment grew by 36,000 while private payroll job only expanded some 50,000. Employment as reported by the household survey grew 117,000. This is the third consecutive jobless recovery and the payroll gains have been very weak in all three. The […]

What is the point of BING ? Brad DeLong notes that Microsoft’s web operations are losing amazing amounts of money, and asks how that is even possible. Google notes that Bing sure seems to be using their product without attribution. They made up words and then constructed google searches which gave results when asked to […]

Paul Krugman notes that average household income has grown markedly less than GDP per household since 1973. He discusses the two most important factors. The cost of employee benefits (health insurance) have increased more than wages and are not counted in personal income, and household income is top coded — the very highest incomes are […]

Hat tip Mark Thoma for Brad Delong’s catch of the ‘can’t hire workers’ complaint without checking for real reasons or facts: Quote: Grasping for Reality about Labor Market Conditions Fresno is not a microcosm of the US. Brad DeLong explains why “it has never been wise to generalize from the state of Fresno’s labor market […]

I wasn’t going to mention Melissa Mia Hall’s death here—this is economics and politics, not sf—but now it is clear that, as usual, there is an overlap: If she had seen the doctor, most likely he would have suspected more than a pulled muscle and would have ordered a life-saving EKG. As Texas lawyer, writer […]