The Angry Bear

From a story in Daily Mail: Terror suspects including jihadis returning from fighting in Syria are to be offered taxpayer-funded homes, counselling and help finding jobs to stop them carrying out attacks in Britain. The top-secret Government strategy, codenamed Operation Constrain, could even allow fanatics to jump to the top of council house waiting lists. Official documents seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal that up to 20,000 extremists previously...

A NAWRU proposal Marco Fioramanti and I have strongly criticized the European Commission DG EcFin Output Gap working Group estimates of output gaps. I have also written a lot here at angrybearblog This topic is very important, because the output gaps are used to calculate cyclically corrected budget balances which are regulated by the Stability and Growth Pact. The calculations determine dictates for fiscal policy of Euro bloc member states. Having...

Gimme shelter: the real cost of renting vs. homeownership What is the real cost of shelter? Over the last decade there has been lots of discussion of housing prices in isolation. Sometimes that discussion includes an inflation adjustment — which is problematic, since housing constitutes nearly 40% of the entire consumer price index, so in essence housing is being deflated largely by the cost of housing itself! From time to time there has also been a...

I have been getting quite a few alerts on proposed changes happening behind the scenes with the ACA. I also found a couple of new places with some intelligent writers who have explained things in greater depth than what I knew. The CMS is proposing a rule allowing states greater authority in defining the ACA. This comes in addition to Trump’s EO. The new rule would give states greater flexibility in: – Defining the ACA’s minimum essential benefits to...

Everything Is Going Great, So Let’s Change It Well, the actual headline on the front page of the Washington Post below the fold today reads, “Economy shows strong growth, could provide GOP momentum.”  The strong growth is the 3.0% annual growth rate of GDP in the third quarter (supported by a strong stock market), with the momentum not being the obvious point that this might lead to general popular electoral support in the future for the GOP, but more...

A Serious Misreading of Coase Corey Robin is very insightful about a lot of things.  I think his take on conservatism, that the thread running through it is opposition to attempts to demolish pre-existing hierarchies, explains ideological twists and turns that would otherwise remain mysterious.  Don’t take this post as an expression of anti-Robinism. But CR seriously misreads economic texts that abut political theory.  I felt this way about his analysis...

Marxism-Leninism In China Update The once-every five years Chinese Communist Party conference is now over.  It appears that Xi Jinping has not identified an heir to himself as his two predecessors did at the time of this equivalent meeting during their presidencies.  Furthermore, unlike either of them, Xi has joined Mao and Deng Xiaoping in having his work identified in the Chinese constitution as being an official part of Chinese ideology.  Most...

Top marginal taxation and economic growth by Santo Milasi and Robert Waldmann has (finally) been publishedhere in Applied Economics ABSTRACT The article explores the relationship between top marginal tax rates on personal income and economic growth. Using a data set of consistently measured top marginal tax rates for a panel of 18 OECD countries over the period 1965–2009, this article finds evidence in favour of a quadratic top tax–growth relationship....