Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

A couple of weeks ago, the House passed a Tax Reform Budget Resolution. Today, the Senate will take a vote on its Tax Reform Budget Resolution. Once passed, the differences will need to be resolved by both legislative bodies. President Trump met with the Senate Committee which included 6 Democratic Senators of which 5 are up for re-election in 2018. Trump impressed upon Senator Wyden the need for support of the Republican Tax Reform measure. Except the...

(Dan here…Stormy sends a reminder that the world has a real side as well…lifted from an e-mail)) Calling out the precursor to an Ecological Armageddon. Thought you might like to see this study—also written up in Guardian.  Economists are totally irrelevant.   Profit and money are their game….and that game is ending within our children’s lifetime. More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas See also:...

Here is something I have been working on for the last month.  As it happens, last week Kevin Drum posted some aspects of the same data. House prices have exceeded by a substantial margin median household income: But the monthly mortgage payments have not: This is because, while the prices of houses have increased, mortgage interest rates have decreased over the same period. So, saving for the down payment is considerably more difficult...

A thought for Sunday: the Rule of Gerontocracy The US looks like government of, by, and for senior citizens. President Donald Trump just had his 72nd birthday. He assumed office at age 71, the oldest person ever to do so. In Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is 75 years old.  His Democratic counterpart, Charles Schumer, is a relatively spry 66. The median age of US Senators is 63. A full 30 Senators are age 70 or older. Sixteen of them...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) Is This Why Wages Are Low? These are two graphs from a post over at the Center for Equitable Growth.  The top chart shows that the relationship between unemployment and wage growth isn’t as strong as you’d think.  Recent research highlighted by Fed President Bullard made the same observation.  But the bottom chart — now that’s what a tight correlation looks like! I ran a quick, down-and-dirty...

The Incidence of the Obamacare Subsidies Justin Fishel and Mary Bruce covers Trump’s dismantling of Obamacare: The White House announced Thursday night that the administration will slash Obamacare subsidy payments to insurers. The “cost-sharing reduction payments,” worth an estimated $7 billion this year, are intended to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income Americans on Obamacare … House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader...

Enslaved to an Individualist View of Social Change I note with some interest the debate over whether it is ethically necessary to refer to slaveholders as “enslavers” in order to convey our disapproval over their actions.  The obsessive use of the enslaving terminology in The Half Has Never Been Told (Baptist) bothered me at the time, and now I see he was part of a trend. I understand the motivation—up to a point.  Anyone who participated in the slave...

They are monsters The President and his GOP majorities in Congress are monsters. As one commentator on NPR put it yesterday afternoon, the President’s default mode is to toss an armed hand grenade into a room in order to create chaos.  He can then pick out the most vulnerable, and use that leverage to enter into a win-lose deal. Meanwhile, having been emboldened by the 2011 Debt Ceiling Debacle, the Congressional GOP majorities, who haven’t been able to...

By Steve Roth  (originally published at Evonomics) How Amazon’s Accounting Makes Rich People’s Income Invisible Image you’re Jeff Bezos, circa 1998. You’re building a company (Amazon) that stands to make you and your compatriots vastly rich. But looking forward, you see a problem: if your company makes profits, it will have to pay taxes on them. (At least nominally, in theory, 35%!) Then you and your investors will have to pay taxes on them again when...

IMF Fiscal Monitor: Progressive Taxation Need Not Deter Growth The latest from the IMF is a must read for progressives even if it runs contrary to the nonsense coming out of the White House: At the global level, inequality has declined substantially over the past three decades, but within national boundaries, the picture is mixed: some countries have experienced a reduction in inequality while others, particularly advanced economies, have seen a...