by Bruce Webb There has been a recent mini-surge of op-eds claiming that the ‘assets’ of the Trust Funds, all $2.6 trillion, are simply mythical. The most recent Scrooge to argue this line may have been Thomas McClanahan of the KC Star in this piece from Christmas: More mythbusting on Social Security ‘money’” in which […]
The Myth-ing Logic of Phony IOUs in the Soc Sec Trust Funds
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 […]
Yves on stimulus and tax cuts
As usual Yves is well articulated and clear.
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 […]
Robert Reich and old people ‘clogging up the pipes’
Video of Robert Reich is here discussing unemployment and (updated) uses the lump of labor fallacy description: Transcript:>>and when we’re at a time when there’s so many people in their 50s who are unemployed and may not be able to get back into the job — the job market, I mean, it’s unlikely to happen, […]
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 […]