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

“Freedom to Farm”: GOP Hypocrisy – then and now

In a comment to a Mark Thoma post regarding U.S. farm subsidies, Brad Setser gently reminds me not to fall for the Cato and Heritage spin on the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996 – also known as “Freedom to Farm”. It seems the zeal of the Bush Administration to impose future […]

Bill Bennett’s Remarks: The Premise of the Question

Jonah Goldberg wants us to return to the caller’s question that prompted William Bennett’s poor choice of words: A quick recap: Bennett got a call from a listener suggesting that Social Security was in financial straights because so many taxpayers had been aborted after Roe vs. Wade. The caller was making an ostensibly pro-life point. […]

Employment Falls

CalculatedRisk provides a nice summary of the September Jobs Report. I suppose the 35 thousand drop in employment per the Payroll Survey (17 thousand drop per the Household Survey) is not as bad as one might have feared given the Katrina effect, which the BLS readily admits is hard to measure. The employment-population ratio fell […]

Financing Katrina Relief Efforts: Capital Budgeting ala the National Review

Republicans are split over how to pay for the Katrina-Rita relief and reconstruction efforts. President Bush wants to temporarily increase the deficit. Fiscal conservatives like Andrew Samwick have fiscal offsets in mind to avoid adding even more government debt to our children’s future. Jerry Bowyer sides with Bush: George W. Bush is not a Goldwater […]

DeMint’s National Sales Tax: Applied to Profits

Tax Analysts reports: Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., on October 5 said he hopes to energize the tax reform debate with a proposal to replace the federal income tax with an 8.5 percent national retail sales tax on individual purchases and business profits … DeMint plans to introduce the bill, a hybrid of a retail sales […]

Tamny on Wicksell’s Monetary Economics

John Tamny continues the National Review’s gold bug obsession: In 1898 Knut Wicksell said there was “no need to waste words proving how important it is that the exchange value of money or, what is the same thing seen from the opposite angle, the general level of commodity prices, remains as stable and constant as […]

Congressional Oversight

This sounds about right: Storms Show A System Out Of BalanceGOP Congress Has Reduced Usual Diet of Agency Oversight Congress… has had little appetite in recent years for executive branch oversight. And now, as lawmakers probe FEMA’s mistakes in responding to Katrina, they are waking up to the consequences of neglect. Government scholars and watchdog […]

A Quandary

Back in August, I somewhat tepidly endorsed John Roberts: Is Roberts really such a bad nominee? His record of arguing before the USSC, plus a bit of time as an appelate court judge, seem to make him well-qualified. And at least by Owen and Rogers-Brown standards, he’s not a giant nutbag. My thinking at the […]

World Saving and Investment: CNN Reads Brad Setser

CNN/Money reports: NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Some of the billions in windfall profits going to overseas oil producers are coming back to the United States in the form of foreign investment, according to a published report. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that oil exporters like Saudi Arabia are saving and investing far more and […]

Income Distribution in China: Club for Growth Misreads Mark Thoma

Is the Club for Growth endorsing corruption? In their Tempers Flare in Red China, this club for rich people questions the intent of the Chinese government as expressed in this story: After 20 years of opening and reform, China has now come to a key stage of development,” said Ye Duchu, a professor at the […]