The Angry Bear

by Barkley Rosser Poland: “What Are These People Complaining About?” Thus spake Jeffrey Sachs in January 1994 at the ASSA/AEA meetings shortly after the Solidarity government of Lech Walesa was defeated in an election over plans to cut old age pensions, which Sachs thought were too high. He has since recanted some of his views from that time, but indeed Poland had been the poster boy for the Washington Consensus on transition, with its “shock therapy”...

by Sandwichman Gibberish Repeat after me: The world is not a zero-sum game. Technology often creates more jobs than it destroys. The number of jobs in the economy depends on how much people are spending and investing. High-skilled tech workers grow the economic pie by boosting productivity, encouraging more investment and increasing entrepreneurship. Economists call this “the lump of labor” fallacy. Jennifer Rubin, WaPo Trump and right-wingers who have never...

After being confronted by TPM reporter Alice Ollstein about the exemption for Washington elected officials and their staff, it was obvious they were caught off guard. Read some of the answers dancing around the issue. New Jersey Republican Representative Tom MacArthur who proposed an amendment allowing states to opt out of key PPACA requirements. Read what he and other Republican House Representatives had to say when they were asked about the exempt to the...

One Happy Republican House Representative If you have not been paying attention, it looks like the Republicans are getting ready again to submit another version of a PPACA/ACA repeal bill. New Jersey Republican Representative Tom MacArthur is proposing an amendment allowing states to opt out of key PPACA requirements. For example: - Preventative Care: The PPACA has 62 preventative measures or Essential Preventive Care benefits which are no cost to a patient....

Via Diane Ravitch’s`blog comes this bit of news…the real world is business is a meme underlying our conversations in politics. Well, this is good news! Ohio Governor John Kasich’s proposal that teachers should be required to “job shadow” a business to learn about “the real world” has been shot down (thanks to Ohio Algebra Teacher for sharing!). Democrats’ counterproposal that Kasich be required to spend 40 hours annually job shadowing people who work in...

by New Deal democrat A thought for Sunday: the economy is on autopilot. Pray that it stays that way It’s Sunday, so I get to step out from nerdy analysis, and opine as I please. Back in 2014, when there was another GOP “wave” election in the Congress, I wrote that the silver lining was that we were at the best point in the economic cycle for it to function on autopilot for the next 24 months. In other words, almost all of the long term indicators were...

I am generally very very impressed by Paul Waldman at the Plum line blog (for one thing I admire the lack of Ego he demonstrates by writing for a blog subtitled “Greg Sargent’s take from a liberal perspective). Waldman is reliably brilliant (so is Sargent). Now finally I find something he wrote with which I disagree. In the generally excellent “President Trump Appoints Tax Fairy to Key Economic Post” Waldman wrote ” The point isn’t that tax increases help...

by Kenneth Thomas Tax Justice Network Taxcast, March 2017: Brexit and Tax Havens; Losses to Tax Avoidance Will Brexit harm the City of London’s tax haven? With weak regulation, money laundering, and satellites like BVI, Cayman Islands, and Jersey, everyone knows it’s already a tax haven. The UK is threatening to be more of a tax haven if they don’t get their way on other issues in the Brexit negotiations, but the EU will be vigilant on this issue, in John...

Jeff Sessions said “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” There has been considerable discussion of the phrase “and island in the Pacific”. With that phrase, Sessions made it clear that he considers Hawaii to be a second class state — not a real American state like Alabama. I have no doubt...