…economic-substantive-due-process argument on appeal—if only ostensibly—presumably because he views the West Coast Hotel and the three quarters of a century of Supreme Court jurisprudence based on that opinion as having…

…This book is making me wonder if we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe it’s not “Is Economics a Science,” but rather “Is Economics a Discipline.” More to come on this….

…budget fracas. Ever since Stanley Surrey popularized the concept of tax expenditures nearly half a century back, economists have argued that many tax breaks are equivalent to government spending. Virtually…

…rewards for contributing to our society, a theory that was in the 19th century called “marginal-productivity theory,” then you could say, “OK, those who contribute more should get more.” But…

RJS had been a long-time commenter at my blog, News N Economics, and has joined Angry Bear’s thread of comments. RJS runs his own blog, Global Glass Onion, where he…

…are ancient. Being dirt poor is a venerable world sport, and the tactics have been practiced since before written records. But in the past century we seem to have entered…

…don’t see much of any change pre-August to post November. The graph sure doesn’t look like a response to a larger open market operation than any in the 20th century….

Mark Thoma begins with a hilarious typo, but eventually gets to the Quote of the Decade (if not century) from Alan Blinder: If we economists stubbornly insist on chanting ‘free…

…deficits (that is, when its total revenues fall short of its benefit payments) changes from year-to-year as assumptions change based on recent economic performance. But typically that date is sometime…

…June 2004 estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security can pay all promised benefits without changes for even longer, until 2052. That’s nearly half a century….