The Angry Bear

Everyone is reporting a 2018 Budget has been passed. Tucked away inside the 2018 Budget is a Tax Reform Resolution which allows the House to write the bill. The House has passed the Senate Tax Reform Budget Resolution creating a $1.5 trillion deficit with a 216-212 vote. What this means in the Senate is a majority vote is only necessary to pass the Tax Reform bill which Trump has been campaigning and tweeting silly comments. Unless the House and Senate...

(Dan here..lifted from 2010 Angry Bear postings and still centrally relevant.  More to be posted) A Proposed Bet for Professors Bryan Caplan and David R. Henderson   by Mike Kimel A Proposed Bet for Professors Bryan Caplan and David R. Henderson (and Anyone Else Who Believes Lower Taxes Generate Faster Economic Growth) Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog. Professors Caplan and Henderson, Both of you have had recent posts that indicate you have some...

Here’s the abstract of an article by Frank Schmidt in the Archives of Scientific Psychology: Governments often base social intervention programs on studies done by psychologists and other social scientists.Often these studies fail to mention other research suggesting that such interventions may have a limited chance of actually working. The omitted research that is not mentioned often shows that the behaviors and performances targeted for improvement by...

The story as it is told is “Iowa’s Healthcare Market has imploded. Companies have gone out of business, lost money, premiums increased, policies canceled, etc. “ With Obamacare’s fifth open-enrollment season kicking off on Nov. 1, the consequences are playing out across one of America’s most politically influential states as residents struggle to maintain coverage.” It has been difficult to implement the ACA with the issues with the healthcare exchanges,...

I jump at a rare chance to disagree with Paul Krugman and as a bonus also with my very good friend Brad DeLong, because Krugman just tweeted that Brad is right Brad is right here: Mankiw et al have clearly made a math error https://t.co/HpyVdoyRCT 1/ — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 24, 2017 update: Krugman has a whole blog post about how Brad is right. The discussion started with Republican efforts to argue that, this time, it really will trickle...

Corporate Profit Tax Cuts and Wages: the UK Experience Kimberly Clausing and Edward Kleinbard have each written some interesting papers on transfer pricing. Here they team up on a different topic: The President’s Council of Economic Advisers claims that slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent would boost the average American’s wages by $4,000 per year (“very conservatively”) — and perhaps by as much as $9,000. If true, that would be a remarkable...

Remembering Black Monday The largest single one day decline in percentage terms of the Dow-Jones average (22.6%) happened 30 years ago today, on October 19, 1987.  It was a Monday, hence “Black Monday.”  Although unlike after the second largest such one day decline in percentage terms (12.8%) on October 28, 1929, the US economy did not go into a decline, much less anything remotely resembling the Great Depression.  Indeed, the very next day, after...

The Wall Street Journal had a piece that made reference to this story in the Cornell Daily Sun: Martha E. Pollack, nearing the six-month mark of her presidency, is facing her first major test at Cornell after hundreds of black students, responding to the arrest of a student who may be charged with a hate crime, marched into her office last week and hand-delivered a series of demands. The most interesting of the demand is: We demand that Cornell Admissions...

Hurricane Relief: Interesting developments going on in the Senate. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is taking to task administration officials and conservative movement leaders by holding up the confirmation of Russ Vought as the right hand man to Mick Mulvaney’s at the Office of Management and Budget. Wonder why he would do this? Apparently Senator Coryn believes there should be more funding for Texas’ hurricane relief. He has made it clear that Vought will...