The Angry Bear

(Dan here…reposted due to discussion in a previous thread) CRS: Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out? Bruce Webb | July 21, 2015 Very interesting paper that I missed in real time. Social Security: What Would Happen If the Trust Funds Ran Out? Almost everyone who addresses this question assumes that the answer is pretty simple: if either of the Social Security Trust Funds goes to zero than benefits will automatically drop from...

Housing BOOM! 2 Housing is a very important long leading indicator, and it reflects both the consumer and producer sides of the economy. And this morning, at least in terms of starts, it hit a grand slam. Total housing starts were 1.608 million units annualized, the highest number since the end of 2006. The less volatile and slightly more leading permits declined slightly to 1.416 million units annualized, but the three month average of each made new...

I have exchanged emails with Kip Sullivan several times and believe he has the clearest explanation on Single Payer. I have found him to be a good source for the two Single Payer bills in Congress today. Unfortunately, it is a long explanation and it can not be summed up on one page or in the amount of time you would spend watching the news at 10 PM. To compensate for the length of the presentation, I have broken it down into two parts. I hope you take...

“Teacher of the Year‘ kneels during college football championship attended by Trump,”ABC News, January 16, 2020 During a ceremony honoring the 2019 “Teachers of the Year,” one in particular stood out. The honoree from Minnesota, Kelly Holstine, chose to kneel during the national anthem at the NCAA football championship game on Monday, where the ceremony took place, “to stand up for marginalized and oppressed people,” according to a tweet she wrote, which...

Dan Shaviro (NYU) and Tim Smeeding (WISC) on NPR’s Detroit Today Show For those of you who may not have the opportunity to tune into Stephen Henderson’s radio program Detroit Today on NPR, it might be useful to have a short summary of the January 9 discussion of the “wealth gap” from that program. Background Tax lawyers have traditionally talked of the “tax gap”1  and frequently mentioned the growing “income gap” between the top 1% of the income...

The US-China Nothing Burger Trade Deal There has been much hype about the signing of Phase One (and probably only) US-China trade deal.  However based on a front page story in today’s Washington Post, there is not much there.  The US did not raise tariffs as planned, but tarifsf still remain on two thirds of the sectors that had them, although some were halved.  But numerous US sectors see no change at all and are now viewing the  situation as not...

Real wages declined slightly in Q4 2019; nearly flat since last January In December consumer inflation was +0.2%. Since in last Friday’s jobs report average hourly earnings also increased +0.1%, real average hourly earnings declined slightly: In a longer term perspective, this means that real wages also declined from 97.8% to 97.5% of their all time high in January 1973: The YoY measure of real average wages also declined sharply from +1.6% to...

Adapted from; “Trump’s Plot Against Health Care Continues, He is still coming for your coverage and lying about it.,NYT Opinion, Paul Krugman, January 13, 2019. Trump in a tweet: “Mini Mike Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on False Advertising. I was the person who saved Pre-Existing Conditions in your Healthcare, you have it now, while at the same time winning the fight to rid you of the expensive, unfair and very unpopular Individual Mandate…..” As...

Scenes from the December jobs report: leading jobs sectors and wages Let’s take a more detailed look at last Friday’s December jobs report. First, as usual for the past few months, let’s look at the more leading jobs sectors. This month, let’s also take a more detailed look at wage growth and why it may have suddenly decelerated. As an initial note, revisions going back to late 2017 are going to be available next month, and preliminarily it was already...