This is an almost semi serious proposal suggesting payday lenders could get good publicity. There are many entities with plenty of spare cash. The US Treasury isn’t one of them. I think that the good publicity gained by offering zero interest loans to unpaid federal employees is worth the cost. They are good credit risks […]
How Shocking Was Shock Therapy? In 2007 Naomi Klein got quite a bit of attention and mostly favorable comment for her book, Shock Doctrine. It promulgated that global elites used periods of crisis around the world to force damaging neoliberal policies derived from the Chicago School and Washington Consensus upon unhappy populations that suffered greatly […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) August 31, 2015: As America’s bridges, roads, and other infrastructure dangerously deteriorate from decades of neglect, there is a mounting sense of urgency that it is time to build a giant wall. Across the U.S., whose rail system is a rickety antique plagued by deadly accidents, Americans are increasingly recognizing that […]
Good news from the employment report: workers are finally getting raises! When it comes to jobs, if there is one trend that really set apart 2018 from any prior year of this expansion, it is that ordinary workers are finally getting decent raises. Let’s start by looking at the monthly % change in average hourly […]
2018 – The Year of the Complicated Suburb, Amanda Kolson Hurley, CityLab In the past several years, a much more complex picture has emerged—one of Asian and Latino “ethnoburbs,” rising suburban poverty, and Baby Boomers stuck in their split-levels. 2018 really drove home the lesson of when Americans say they live in the suburbs (as […]
December jobs report: 2018 goes out with a bang HEADLINES: +312,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose +0.2% from 3.7% to 3.9% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 7.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: declined -70,000 […]
Can We Minimize Econogenic Outcomes? I am back from the annual ASSA/AEA meetings in Atlanta. I learned a new term that on checking I find has been around for about five years. It is “econogenic,” coined by George DeMartino, who spoke on this in a session on “Ethics and Economics” held by the Association for […]
Given the debate about returning to 60s level top marginal tax rate of 70% amazingly re-opened by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I decided to actually read the Romer and Romer paper (pdf warning) which includes evidence suggesting an even higher rate is optimal. It is a masterpiece, which I won’t try to summarize. Read it. I do […]
On Some Predictions I am not somebody who makes endo/beginning of year predictions, and I am not about to stsrt now. But I have just read a guest post by Jeffrey Frankel on Econbrowser where he brags about making six accurate predictions for 2018 while not reporting on some others he made that did not […]