Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Economics: a visual approach

Lee Arnold has a series of visual presentations at a high school level that might be useful to introduce different topics to friends and family that do not follow econoblogs. Here is the introduction to the series, which Lee tells me is for dissemination. (The visuals are copyrighted to help prevent voice overs and other […]

Top Marginal Income Tax Rates & Real Economic Growth, a Bar Chart

by Mike Kimel Top Marginal Income Tax Rates & Real Economic Growth, a Bar ChartCross posted at the Presimetrics blog. The chart below shows tax rates on one axis and the growth rates in real GDP that accompanied those tax rates on the other: I broke the tax ranges into 5 percentage point increments centered […]

Facts or Fallacies? Part II: In which Paul Krugman takes his lumps and eats them too while Jamie Galbraith runs afoul of the notorious lump-of-labor f

by Tom Walker(Sandwichman at Ecological Headstand) Facts or Fallacies? Part II: In which Paul Krugman takes his lumps and eats them too while Jamie Galbraith runs afoul of the notorious lump-of-labor fallacy-fallacy In comments in response to Part I at Angry Bear, it was suggested that Paul Krugman has also made the lump of labor […]

Facts or Fallacies? Part I: BLS Data v. the Zombie Lump-of-Labor Fallacy-Fallacy

Facts or Fallacies? Part I: BLS Data v. the Zombie Lump-of-Labor Fallacy-Fallacy by Tom Walker (Sandwichman at Ecological Headstand) In the third quarter of 2010 real GDP in the U.S. was 21 percent higher than it had been in the fourth quarter of 1999. Labor force participation grew during the same period by 9 percent, […]

The top marginal income tax rate should be about 65%…

by Mike Kimel Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog. To maximize real economic growth in the United States, the top marginal income tax rate should be about 65%, give or take about ten percent. Preposterous, right? Well, it turns out that’s what the data tells us, or would, if we had the ears to listen. […]

Keynes and Picasso: Stimulative Conspicuous Consumption?

by Bruce Webb Digby points us to the following NYT piece: At $106.5 Million, a Picasso Sets an Auction Record with what is in one sense an understandable bitter comment “Hey, dead artists need work too.” And as a comment on the odd priorities of our plutocracy a reasonable moral judgement, but as an economic […]