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

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 […]

Who Committed Excess Borrowing?

With a hat tip to Rebecca’s post below, normalized borrowing growth in several sectors over the past 25 years. (Source: FRB Flow of Funds data) Yes, there are three very similar (shades of blue) lines—but they are all household and non-profit data. (The growth in “credit market instruments” is, presumably, primarily driven by the non-profit […]

Drop the corporate saving rate, please…

Update: The term corporate savings below refers to excess saving, gross saving over gross domestic investment, as a percentage of GDP. This is the defined 3-sector financial balance model (referred to below). The Federal Reserve Flow of Funds showed a third quarter shift in the financial sector balances: the corporate saving rate declined 0,25% to […]