Robert Waldmann Those of us who fear global warming want to make it more expensive to burn coal. One way to do this is to impose absurdly high wages and restrictive work rules on coal mines. We know how to drive prices up. It is easy. Militant unions have shown the way. I propose the […]
Robert Waldmann Ezra Klein shows a graph and writes What you’re seeing there [will see if you click this link] is a projection for how our energy usage would change after 20 years of a Waxman-Markey-like cap-and-trade bill. As you can see, transportation — which is probably what most Americans think would be affected — […]
by Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and Braintruster Marshall Auerback at the New Deal 2.0 For once, Canada is making the news for the wrong reasons. The United Kingdom has braced the country for cuts in government spending up to 20 percent as the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition lays the groundwork for an austerity program to […]
by Rebecca “Go long whatever Chinese consumers buy and go short Chinese capital spending (construction) plays. Consistently, go long tech/short material stocks.” That is the first sentence of a BCA Research report’s executive summary on China equity strategy (link not available). Rather than a global equity strategy, I’d like to put this into an economic […]
We can only hope that the special Infrastructure supplement in today’s edition of The Pink One was written and/or edited by a PwC, not an FT, employee. Otherwise, how are we to explain Michael Peel’s curious declaration in “Unweaving a Tangled Web” that: …[there is a] continued prevalence of corruption around the complex, lucrative, and […]
It appears that someone (who I am sure has family income under $250,000 per year and is just interested in social science) contests my view that families with income over $250,000 per year are rich. He or she notes that two earner families can be rich by working real hard and that price levels are […]
Robert Waldmann Jeff Sachs proposed higher taxes on the rich.Felix Salmon wrote I don’t think this is possible, politically, in either the US or the UK. In the US, the middle classes are implacably opposed to tax hikes on people making more money than they themselves will ever make. Kevin Drum agrees with Salmon about […]
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite. This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward. This is […]
Democrats/Republicans face angry electorate is the early lead at MSNBC for this day of ‘important’ primaries. Yet what issues matter most to these groups of angry people? Just the tea party? Dismay with Pres. O’bama? Vote for John Boehner clones? Righteous perfected Christians? Unemployed versus employed? Can a deficit crow even be heard over the […]
by Linda Beale Extension Bill and Carried Interest: American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act of 2010 [Ataxingmatter is back online after a break for the Chicago Law and Society Conference] Last Friday, the House passed the extenders bill, HR 4213, the American Jobs, Closing Tax Loopholes and Preventing Outsourcing Act of 2010, […]