Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

Three reasons for the decline in Biden’s (and Democrats’) popularity Dan Guild follows presidential approval closely and uses it to model election outcomes, including State level as well as Congressional and Senate races. He’s been very consistent, and very good. For the past several months, his hair has been on fire about a real decline in Biden’s approval ratings, for example, here. He is particularly concerned about the big decline among...

September Personal Income Fell 1.0%, Spending Rose 0.6%, PCE Price Index Up 0.3%; Savings Rate Lowest Since December 2019, Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666 Friday’s release of the September Income and Outlays report was concurrent with the GDP release on Thursday, and all the PCE data in the 3rd quarter GDP report we just covered actually originated with this report . . . and like that GDP report, all the dollar values reported here...

Commenter and Blogger RJS, Marketwatch 666, 3rd Quarter GDP Grew at 2.0% Rate even as Real Final Sales of GDP Ticked Lower Our economy grew at a 2.0% rate in the 3rd quarter, quite a bit slower than the growth rate of the second quarter, as increasing consumer outlays for services, greater nonresidential fixed investment, and inventory improvement were offset by decreasing consumer outlays for durable goods, shrinking residential investment, lower...

“Democrats Introduce Plan To Fix Social Security, the way we fixed the cat,” Commenter and Social Security Expert Dale Coberly assesses the latest plan coming out of Washington DC “Congress has a new plan to fix Social Security. How it would change benefits,” CNBC in the House. Dale was one of the creators of the Northwest Plan which was submitted to Congressman DeFazio who sent Dale Coberly’s Northwest Plan to the Social Security Administration –...

My Big Picture It’s a Sunday (Dan here…I put this up late), and it’s been a while since I put up some generalized thoughts on where we are, so let’s update. I’ll go in order of my optimism on the economy, COVID, and the political situation. The economy I am pretty happy about the place the economy is in right now, and for the near term future. Yes, we have inflation and supply chain issues, but we always have issues. And Q3 GDP will...

Updated US wealth distribution data shows how bad the Great Recession and its aftermath were, and how effective the pandemic assistance has been   The desert of new economic data this week continues today. But last week the Fed released its quarterly data on wealth distribution in the US, and it shows an important point about the efficacy of the emergency pandemic assistance. Let’s take a look. Let’s start with the raw absolute levels of...

Politicians, preachers, and other charlatans have long known people were manipulable. They had achieved their mastery of the craft of manipulation by observation and practice. By craft, they were con artists. In another sense, they were psychologists before there was such. Before 1860, psychology was a branch of philosophy. A German, Wilhelm Wundt, was one of the first to proclaim psychology a science in its own right and the first to proclaim...

UNITED WE SPEND For 20 Top-Selling Drugs Worldwide, Big Pharma Revenue from U.S. Sales Combined Exceeded Revenue from the Rest of the World, Public Citizen, Rick Claypool and Zain Rizvi, I have written on the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the past on Angry Bear, pointing to a WHO report which showed the costs laid out to bring the drugs to market had been recovered, and hinting on a new approach to increasing profitability by claiming...

Briefly, with more info being found at The American Prospect by David Dayen (link below). The USPS has initiated check cashing service for a minimal fee. And Louis Destroy the USPS DeJoy has bought into this service. The pilot was launched on September 13 (?) in four locations: Washington, D.C.; Falls Church, Virginia; Baltimore; and the Bronx, New York. The initial banking test allows customers to cash business or payroll checks at the post...

Matt Yglesias has published an interesting essay at his substack by Simon Bazelon and David Shor arguing that Democrats should introduce stricter means testing into the Child Tax Credit. Their key points are as follows: The current CTC design already has means-testing for very high incomes, which means that the administrative burdens associated with means-testing (making low-income people file tax returns, etc.) are already being...