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

Extending Trumps 2017 Tax Cuts

Trumps 2017 Tax Break Extension chart and explanation . . . Sources: CBO (for most provisions), *JCT( R&E provision), **CRFB (Interest provision) New estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put a price tag of nearly $5 trillion on extending all the Trump-GOP tax law, which is mostly scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. That is more […]

Being atypical is “not representative of a type, group, or class”

Dean Baker: “Story telling attracts attention and sells newspapers.” I was reading at another site which was making the argument of Medicare Advantage plans being less costly than Traditional Medicare. It cites a truism that Medicare Advantage offers Part D and Supplemental in its package while Traditional Medicare does not. That is true. However, Medicare […]

The Appointments

Why The Gaetz Defeat Really Matters The first step of defiance is the hardest. Senate Republicans took it. William Kristol and Andrew Egger Earlier this week, we reported on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2020 dalliance with the “plandemic” conspiracy theory. Turns out that dalliance goes deeper than we previously knew. The social media account Patriot […]

Hourly Wage Labor Benefited more, 2020 to 2023 than Salaried

An interesting phenomenon occurred from 2020 – 2023. Hourly wage labor experienced increasing wages during the pandemic. A recent NBER report by David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew susply the data creating a foundation for the Labor v Salary words. To display I provided an additional graph besides the one shown by The Bulwark’s […]

Population Growth Outcomes

In 2006 Joel Garreau wrote “300 Million and Counting” in the Smithsonian. It was then we were at a replacement rate of 2.01. The nation was barely replacing itself.  November 20, 1967, the population of the United States passed 200 million. It had taken ~29 years to add 100 million more people to the US […]

Undocumented labor: solutions, not scapegoating

Trump has promised to deport >10 million undocumented people living in the US. He justifies this by saying they are dangerous criminals. In fact, immigrants commit crimes at a *lower* rate than US citizens. He has announced his intention to deploy US troops in US streets to capture and detain people who are claimed to […]

Beef Consumption

A typical serving of beef could eat up an entire day’s carbon budget. Maybe it is time to start thinking about other sources of protein and smaller cuts of meat. “Beef consumption is a global problem and meatwashing is making it worse” – presented by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown looks […]

October existing home sales: a pause, or possibly reversal, in the rebalancing trend

 – by New Deal democrat Yesterday’s report on existing home sales indicated, at least for one month, a pause or even reversal in the previous trend of abating price increases and increased inventory. While existing home sales are  not nearly so important to the economy as new home sales, to the extent that home buyers […]