Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

Real wages and unemployment update: April 2018 Now that we have the inflation numbers for April, let’s update the wage situation for ordinary Americans. Real wages YoY are only up +0.2%: More significantly, they are still down -0.3% from their most recent high 9 months ago: They are also only up +0.2% for the entire last 2 years and 2 months. Increased consumption by ordinary Americans isn’t up because they are making more in real...

Two real economic consequences of the Trump presidency Next week we will be 1/3 of the way through Trump’s Presidential term. Last year I used to point out that it was really still Obama’s economy, as the GOP had failed to pass, nor Trump commence, any economic policy of consequence. That is no longer the case. In late December the GOP Congress passed and Trump signed their huge giveaway for the wealthy. Yesterday, Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear...

February of this year and Mick Mulvaney already started to dismantle the CFPB by stripping the agency’s fair-lending office of enforcement powers reducing oversight and penalties for firms that discriminate against borrowers. Enforcement of fair-lending laws is governed by the 2010 financial reform law. Taking away the agency’s enforcement powers creates a vacuum making it unclear as to what happens now. Senator Elizabeth Warren sees Mulvaney’s actions...

Economics: The View from 35,000 Feet Air travel offers an opportunity to catch up on one’s reading.  In my case, this means Marion Fourcade’s “Economics: A View from Below”, which had been sitting in my pile for at least two long weeks.  For those wondering about her title, she has been toying for several years with the actual/mock inferiority felt by other disciplines, such as her own sociology, in the face of the pretensions, authority and worldly...

In the Public Interest has published a new report (pdf) on the impact of charter schools and public school funding in CA: In a first-of-its-kind analysis, this report reveals that neighborhood public school students in three California school districts are bearing the cost of the unchecked expansion of privately managed charter schools. In 2016-17, charter schools cost the Oakland Unified School District $57.3 million, the San Diego Unified School...

Stock of Debt Held by US Public Has Tripled Over the Last Decade & Other Misleading Information My title was the heading of Figure 19 in something from Deutsche Bank that has John Cochrane all stressed out over a pending debt crisis again. This graph is gorgeous. US deficits have, historically, been driven overwhelmingly by the state of the business cycle, and have very little to do with tax policies and spending decisions that dominate press...

Gimme shelter Q1 2018 update: rents and house prices all at or near new extremes This post is a comprehensive update as to the cost of new and existing homes vs. renting, all measured compared with median household income. As such it is epistolary in length. So here is the TL:DR version: as a multiple of median household income, new home prices are at an extreme beyond even the peak of the housing bubble, while existing home prices are about 5% under...

Duncan Foley On Socialist Alternatives to Capitalism Yes, it is May Day, time to think about workers and socialism, while Vladimir Putin gets himself inaugurated for another term as President of Russia, with military vehicles parading In Red Square like they used to for the glory of the workers, but today for the glory of President Putin. So, a couple of weeks ago there was a conference at the New School honoring Duncan Foley, who seems to be gradually...

March 2018 personal income and spending Programming note: I’ve been working on a mega-post about housing, that is now complete except for a few graphs. So, please excuse the brevity otherwise. March 2018 real personal income and spending were both positive. So far, so good. The personal saving rate fell slightly: Again, this is consistent with a late cycle dynamic where consumers are more stretched than they were earlier in the expansion. Real personal...

There has been a bit of commotion recently about the Job Guarantee idea (AKA employer of last resort). I don’t consider myself an opponent of the strategy but I do have several reservations about its political feasibility, the marketing rhetoric of its advocates, and its economic and administrative transparency. Some of these concerns I share with an analysis presented by Robert LaJeunesse in his 2009 book, Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full...