The Angry Bear

Reality begins to sink in for GOPer economic confidence While we are waiting for tomorrow’s employment report, here’s a little something to chew on. In the immediate aftermath of the Presidential election — as in, by the end of that week — Gallup’s measure of economic confidence soared, from its 2016 average of roughly -10 to a positive number and to nearly +10 by the end of November: In fact, while the confidence of Democrats sank, the confidence of GOPers...

Republicans help pass Illinois budget over Rauner’s veto For the second time in as many months, legislative Republicans have turned on their Republican governor for his refusal to back tax increases to help balance the budget. Last month, supermajority Kansas Republicans revolted against Sam Brownback’s six-year tax-cutting experiment, which brought the state persistent budget problems and two credit downgrades. Tonight (July 6) enough Republicans joined with...

Matthew Yglesias commands, I obey. Now I just have to come up with three bad ideas. 1) $25 minimum wage. I am not sure about the $15 dollar proposal. I’m pretty sure that $25 would be too high. I guess it would be popular too. 2) Protection that’s what you’re here for . I am sure that total protectionism is a bad idea, and hinting at it worked pretty well for Trump. 3) Eliminate all taxes on the lower 99%. I tend to wonder if maybe this isn’t such a...

Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there, and demand will follow. — Rick Perry, U.S. Secretary of Energy While the media is having fun at the expense of Secretary Perry’s asinine “economics lesson” it is worth pointing out that the very same publications that ridicule Perry perpetually peddle the exact same theory under the guise of “debunking” the imaginary lump-of-labor fallacy. Here is The Economist from yesterday...

Dan here…I noticed further writing on the macro side of labor and asked Peter’s opinion, and he reminded me of this post. by Peter Dorman  (originally published at Econospeak) Why You Should Never Use a Supply and Demand Diagram for Labor Markets You would know this if you read your Cahuc, Carcillo and Zylberberg, but you probably won’t, so read this instead. A standard S&D diagram for the labor market might look like this: It’s common to use W (wage) on...

I was bouncing around my twitter feed and landed on this tweet which in turn took me to a paper entiteld Childhood family income, adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: quasi-experimental total population study. The paper appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2014. Here’s the basic summary: Background Low socioeconomic status in childhood is a well-known predictor of subsequent criminal and substance misuse behaviours but the causal...

[embedded content] Via Crooks and Liars

by  Joseph Joyce The IMF’s Flexible Credit Line The policy conditions attached to the disbursement of an IMF loan have long been the subject of controversy. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the IMF introduced a new lending program—the Flexible Credit Line—that allowed its members to apply for a loan before a crisis took place. If approved, the member can elect to draw upon the arrangement in the event of a crisis without conditionality, and there...

Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion! In lieu of a more traditional Independence Day post, in view of the fact that the economic expansion turned 8 years old this week, I thought I would take a moment to highlight how far we have come.  Because as mediocre as some things are, we have come a long, long way since the dark days of June 30, 2009. Unemployment has fallen from a high of 10.0 to 4.2%, and underemployment has fallen from 17.1% to 8.4%:...