Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

(Dan here…Better late than never!) A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms Below is a graph showing that the older the demographic (up until age 80), the bigger the turnout during midterm elections. The data behind this graph isn’t just from 2014, but from a series of midterm elections over time — in other words, it has been durable over time. My purpose in this post is show that, even if these percentages hold in this...

Jeffrey Sachs on Trump’s Trade Fallacies I heard on some news show an incredibly stupid statement from our President earlier today and in utter disbelief fired off this comment on some blog: Trump equates our trade deficit with us being ripped off. Let’s do this as a simple example. You walk into Best Buy and purchase a $1000 computer but do not have cash. So you put it on your credit card incurring a $1000 liability. Even though you now have the...

Wilbur Ross on the Effective Rate of Protection When I watched this clip by Wilbur Ross – all I could think of was Mr. Ed. But what did he say? “In a can of Campbell’s Soup, there are about 2.6 pennies worth of steel. So if that goes up by 25 percent, that’s about six-tenths of 1 cent on the price on a can of Campbell’s soup,” Ross argued. “I just bought this can today at a 7-Eleven … and it priced at a $1.99. Who in the world is going to be too...

On Those Aluminum Tariffs The global price of aluminum fell below $1500 per metric ton by the end of 2015. By June 2017, it had risen to $1885 per metric ton. This source suggests that this price is even higher. So what happened yesterday?: The stock market dip reflects the enormous impact that a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum will have on the economy. That’s because so many American industries need steel...

China, not automation, is by far the biggest factor in the decline of prime age labor force participation Perhaps the biggest mystery in economic analysis in the last few years has been trying to find an explanation for the big decline in labor force participation since 1999.  A recent NBER working paper by Abraham and Kearney has posited the most comprehensive answer to date.  Since it was summarized in this Washington Post article, I’m just going to...

If you are under about 45 years of age, the odds are that you agree with one statement made by Dick Cheney: that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” As I mention from time to time, I am a fossil. I remember the “guns and butter” inflation of the late 1960s (Google is your friend) and the stagflationary 1970s. Here is a graph of the interest yield on the 10 year bond from 1981 through 2013: In an era of declining interest rates,...

I haven’t been bothering to comment on initial jobless claims reports lately, for the simple fact that every week it’s the same story:  they’re good! In fact, the initial jobless claims reports are probably the single most positive aspect of the entire economic expansion.  For all intents and purposes, nobody is being laid off! For initial jobless claims even to be giving a “caution signal” about the economy, I would need the YoY comparison to...

by David Zetland  (reposted from Aguanomics) What went wrong in Capetown? I asked that question of Mike Muller, who has been working on water issues there for decades. He referred me to this op/ed he wrote and — more important — the inadequate response from a local city councillor. [Tl;dr: Failure to invest against risk from “inadequate rain” — a problem that climate change will exacerbate.] Taps are running dry — and we are all to blame Water supply...

A Kennedy-Reagan-Trump Fiscal Policy? Heather Long reports that the White House economists have no clue about the history of U.S. fiscal policy: President Trump’s policies are driving an economic turnaround that puts him in the company of transformative presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, White House economists said Wednesday as they unveiled their first “Economic Report of the President.” The report presents a highly optimistic view of...

Divide and Rule There was a time, one I can remember from when I was growing up (the 1950s and 60s), when being a liberal meant you wanted certain rights and benefits for everyone, at least ostensibly.  We had Social Security because everyone should have a basic pension when they retire, and all disabled people need to be cared for.  Freedom of speech was for everyone, even those horrible Nazis in Skokie.  Liberals wanted national health insurance so...