Lawrence Kudlow claimed: Including revisions, January employment is a huge 317,000 above the initial December level. James Hamilton reads this sentence and writes: I’m not quite sure where Larry is getting this 317,000 figure, but I am inclined not to make too much of the data revisions. As the table on the right reveals, the […]
So asks Lawrence Kudlow who writes: Economic pessimists have had a field day ever since GDP was reported a week ago at only 1.1 percent for the fourth quarter. But the latest jobs report released on Friday blew them out of the water. Including revisions, January employment is a huge 317,000 above the initial December […]
Apparently, Donald Marron testified to the Senate Budget Committee yesterday – and if the account I’m being told is true, I have a lot more respect for Senator Judd Gregg (Republican-New Hampshire) than I do for Mr. Marron. From a Tax Analyst account of the testimony: Marron told the committee that the February 1 passage […]
Via Tyler Cowen, John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers questions the empirical evidence purporting to show that capital punishment deters murder: Does the death penalty save lives? A surge of recent interest in this question has yielded a series of papers purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital […]
This morning the BLS released its estimate of net new job creation in Janaury. Including upward revisions in the new job estimates for the previous few months, it was a pretty good report: Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 193,000 in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of […]
Those of us who applauded the Bush41 and Clinton Administrations for moving us closer to free trade might have been tempted to cheer the following passages from the latest State of the Union addressed delivered by Bush43: We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy – or shut ourselves off from […]
It is being reported that the Bush administration is preparing to request $70bn in additional funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush will ask Congress for another $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional sources said on Thursday. The sources said that money, which would […]
The Tax Foundation says yes: When the federal statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent is added to the weighted average of state corporate income taxes, the resulting rate of 39.3 percent means that corporations in the United States are currently at an international competitive disadvantage. In fact, as recent research has indicated, the […]
The brave, brave men and women of the Republican party have decided that federal spending must be cut, and they have courageously decided that those who have it too easy in this country, those who need to make the sacrifices for the greater good are the poor, the elderly, single mothers, and students: The House […]
Chris Edwards picks on the Girlie-man Governor from my state for his claim that state governments are spending too much: State tax revenues jumped 8.7 percent in 2004 and about 8 percent in 2005. About three-quarters of state governments had tax-revenue growth of 6 percent or more in 2005. What will the states do with […]