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

Hey Rustbelt and beyond, Losing factories is not new

(There’s a movie at the end!) For decades we have been hearing about the loss of industrial production through out what is called the “Rust Belt”.  It’s presented, even as recent as the prior presidential election as a relative regional problem that only began post Reagan.  What gets me though is that the reporting and […]

Eleven richest Americans have all received government subsidies

A new report by Good Jobs First shows how the very wealthy in America have benefited from government subsidies as one element in building their fortunes. According to the study, the 11 richest Americans, and 23 of the 25 richest, all have significant ownership in companies that have received at least $1 million in investment […]

U.S. median wealth up from 27th to 25th

Yesterday Credit Suisse released its Global Wealth Databook 2014 to go along with the Global Wealth Report issued Monday. Global wealth hit another new record of $263 trillion as of mid-2014, up 8.3% from mid-2013 (Report, p. 3). Rich people are doing well, but how about the middle class? One measure of this is median […]

Understanding Piketty, part 5 (conclusion)

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the first book to make a data-driven examination of economic inequality. Based on hundreds of years worth of data, it attempts to determine the long-term trends in inequality and the social and political consequences that follow from them. In this final post, I want to highlight the most […]

Understanding Piketty, part 3

Part 3 of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the longest section of the book (230 pages out of 577), providing his analysis of inequality at the level of individuals. Notably, Piketty largely avoids the use of the familiar Gini index because, in his view, it obscures the issue by combining the effects […]

Understanding Piketty, part 1

Thomas Piketty’s (CV) Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most important book on economics published in this century. The book has made a huge splash, and drawn the ire of conservatives, for its straightforward argument that recent increases in inequality in numerous countries are likely to rise to unprecedented heights unless governments can reach […]

Trans Pacific Partnership Bad for the Middle Class, but How Bad? UPDATED

What you don’t know can hurt you. I think that’s a clear lesson of some so-called trade agreements the United States has signed over the last 20 years, and illustrated further by the few that have been defeated, most notably the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, negotiated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from1995 […]

Speaking of inequality

Travis Waldron at Think Progress pointed out this excellent article by David Cay Johnston. It dovetails well with my last post, which showed the fall of individual real wages and their failure to regain their peak fully 40 years after it was reached. Johnston writes: Incomes and tax revenues have grown from 2009 to 2011 […]

Real wages decline; literally no one notices

Cross-posted from Middle Class Political Economist. Your read it here first: Real wages fell 0.2% in 2012, down from $295.49 (1982-84 dollars) to $294.83 per week, according to the 2013 Economic Report of the President. Thus, a 1.9% increase in nominal wages was  more than wiped out by inflation, marking the 40th consecutive year that […]