The BEA has just released its first estimate of economic growth for the fourth quarter of 2005. It was dramatically lower than most people were predicting. The consensus estimate was for about 3.5% growth. Some pessimists guessed that it would be as low as 2.5%. The actual figured turned out to be just 1.1%. From […]
If one goes to cnn.com, the breaking news is that Senator Kerry calls for a filibuster of the Alito nomination. Almost as excellent as the latest from Senator Clinton: “Obviously, I support tracking down terrorists. I think that’s our obligation. But I think it can be done in a lawful way,” the New York Democrat […]
Robert Samuelson provides a few insights worth repeating: Almost everyone agrees that we ought to “fix the health care system” – a completely meaningless phrase despite its popularity with politicians, pundits and “experts.” Indeed, it is popular precisely because it is meaningless … Unfortunately, tinkering isn’t enough. As everyone knows, health care spending has risen […]
Last night AB noted that the “donut hole” in the prescription drug benefit created by the Republican Congress in 2003 is worse than you probably thought. But that may actually turn out to be the smaller of many problems with the plan. A bigger one may be a growing sense that it is unfair, even […]
From the archives: the percentage of total drug costs costs paid out-of-pocket by a typical Medicare beneficiary under the Bush Part D plan: And that’s how it’s designed to work; in practice, it’s even worse. Note: The section of the graph where the percent out of pocket actually increases as drug costs increase is the […]
Even conservatives Arnold Kling and Tyler Cowen are struggling to figure out the underlying premise behind Bush’s health care proposals. Tyler asks “whether people overinvest or underinvest in private sector health insurance”. Quite frankly – I don’t know either.
CNN reports on the exit polls from the election Palestine: According to one exit poll from Bir Zeit University, Fatah garnered 46.4 percent of the vote and Hamas won 39.8 percent. That translates into 63 seats for Fatah and 58 for Hamas, according to the exit poll. I listened to an NPR discussion of the […]
This week’s Econoblog from the Wall Street Journal Online is up. Jim Hamilton and I discuss economic forecasting – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Kash
PGL notes that the argument made by supply-side tax cut advocates centers on the notion that cutting taxes on capital income will encourage risk-taking and thus increase capital formation – i.e., cause an investment boom. PGL’s post nicely points out some theoretical problems with this argument. But there are huge empirical problems with the argument, […]
In the latest praise of the 2003 tax cuts emanating from the National Review, David Gitlitz makes two assertions. One is the old Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc rag that simply because real GDP growth has been strong since the passage of the 2003 tax cut, the cause of this growth must have been the […]