The employment report was weak across the board as the unemployment rate remained at 9.6% as government employment fell -159,000 reflecting both falling temporary Census jobs and loses of some -76,000 local government jobs in both education and noneducation. Private payroll jobs expanded by 64,000– about the same as over the last few months. Hours […]
Cash-Strapped States Resurrect “Debtors’ Prisons” Former Montgomery County, Ohio, public defender Glen H. Dewar is profiled in the ACLU report for his efforts in eliminating the state’s debtors’ prisons. Dewar stated in the report, “My estimate is that 20 to 25 percent of all local incarcerations statewide are for fines and costs, while about 50 […]
Center for Business & Public Policy suggests some complications with public goods and taxes/fee for service in the case of the Obion county, Tenn. man and the fire department story. One is freeriders, but there appears to be more than that: The city of South Fulton in Obion County, Tennessee, offers fire protection to households […]
Kevin Drum in Mother Jones posits this idea: There are several fascinating components to prospect theory, but the one that’s influenced me the most is also the simplest: when faced with a choice, people are far more motivated by loss aversion than by risk aversion. Basically, what this means is that the emotional distress you […]
The Traumatic brain injury series in the Washington Post offers timely information on the thinking on this issue.
Repatriation of $ from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reminds us from 2009: The Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce have proposed resurrecting, as a stimulus measure, the 2004 “dividend repatriation tax holiday,” which allowed firms to bring their foreigngenerated profits back to the United States at a greatly reduced tax rate. The Joint […]
H.R. 3808, The Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2009 (full text here) Version saved on October 1, 2010, 06:59:40, by webmaster: H.R. 3808 would require any Federal or State court to recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such […]
By Noni Mausa Promise Merchants Let me remind you what a very weird idea money is. The IOU is a simple idea. Money is like an IOU, but carried beyondthe boundary of reason into an entirely different and peculiarterritory. If I write an IOU, it has my name on it, your name, perhaps a date,and […]
by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter Defective Chinese-made Drywall–safe harbor to claim repairs are casualty losses In IR 2010-102 (Sept. 30, 2010), the IRS announced that damages from corrosive drywall would be able to be treated as a casualty loss, and in Rev. Proc. 2010-36, there is a “safe harbor” formula for determining the amount of […]
Robert Waldmann Mike Kimel just remarked that Keynes was in no way responsible for the incorrect impression that the Phillips curve graphs the set of unemployment and inflation rates available to policy makers. In a comment, I said he was totally correct. In fact, I’d go further and argued that Keynes warned against that mistake […]