Tag Archives: politics

byPeter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Carbon Gridlock Redux in Washington State A year ago—it already seems like another era—an initiative to set up a carbon tax in Washington State, I-732, was defeated by the voters.  The proposal was to use the money for tax reductions in accordance with the standard economic view that taxing “bads” rather than goods generates a double dividend.  I disagree with that (I think the deadweight loss case...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Another Year of Equity at Evergreen The following email was forwarded to me and many other Evergreen faculty: On [date deleted], students, staff and faculty of The Evergreen State College will hold a Re-Convocation Rally on Red Square to express and affirm their commitment to goals of equity, inclusion and success for all in pursuit of higher education. The rally is organized by Staff and Faculty...

by ProGrowthLiberal (originally published at Econospeak) Does Single Payer Pay for Itself? Was this the message of the title of the latest from Dean Baker: The economies of a single system can be viewed as analogous to the Social Security system, which has administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as much as privatized systems in places like Chile and the United Kingdom. The analogous institution in the health-care sector is of course Medicare, which...

Guest Author: Alan Collinge, StudentLoanJustice.Org,Both Alan and I have written various posts on the student loan crisis. Alan has been featured on Angry Bear Blog from time to time. If you are in college and looking for something worthy to fight for today; as a student, you should consider the student loan issue. Student loans and how they are administered are the national injustice of our time reaching threatening proportions and impacting the...

How to kill Social Security in 2 easy steps Here’s Kevin Drum advocating for step 1:  the best way to address retirement security is to continue reforming 401(k) plans and to expand Social Security—but only for low-income workers. Middle-class workers are generally doing reasonably well, and certainly as well as they did in the past. We don’t need a massive and expensive expansion of Social Security for everyone, but we do need to make Social Security...

Election Tax Returns In an effort to force our present president when running for re-election and future presidential candidates to release income tax returns, California passed SB249 Disclose Act. California became the first state to require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the state ballot. Lawmakers sent Gov. Jerry Brown AB249 Friday requiring candidates to publicly share five years of returns. This comes after...

“ In Cutting Deals With Trump, Are Democrats Walking Into a Trap?” Over the weekend the mainstream press published a flurry of articles about Donald Trump, the pragmatic independent outsider who has no loyalty to any party and will work with anyone to Get Things Done. This excited reaction was in response to the president’s agreement to raise the debt ceiling and fund disaster relief with the help of Democrats. But that’s nothing compared to the delirium...

Via Alternet: Why a Case Against a Dark Money Charter School Group Is Great News for Democracy Billionaire charter school backers in Massachusetts wanted their identities kept secret. In one of the most important decisions ever about dark money in politics, a Massachusetts charter school advocacy group has been ordered to make the names of its donors public, and pay the largest campaign finance fine in state history. The case is likely to reverberate...

On September 7, I pointed out Republicans are preparing Another Assault on the PPACA/ACA in 2017. Republican senators Lindsey Graham S.C. and Bill Cassidy LA are making a last stand in an effort to repeal and replace the ACA by “proposing legislation doing away with many of the subsidies and mandates of the 2010 law. Instead, the Graham – Cassidy Bill would provide block grants to the states to help individuals pay for health coverage. Graham taking it...

WHO OWNS THE WEALTH IN TAX HAVENS?, an NBER working paper, points to following the money: Drawing on newly published macroeconomic statistics, this paper estimates the amount of household wealth owned by each country in offshore tax havens. The equivalent of 10% of world GDP is held in tax havens globally, but this average masks a great deal of heterogeneity—from a few percent of GDP in Scandinavia, to about 15% in Continental Europe, and 60% in Gulf...