Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

The Times Handles the Trump Tax Cut Framework with Kid Gloves There’s been a good bit written about the Trump tax cut framework released just over a week ago.  Most of it points out, as I have here and here, the absurdity of the claims by Trump and GOP spokespeople that this isn’t a tax cut aimed at benefiting the ultra wealthy.  After all, even with few details and no attempt to deal with the really tough issues that would face real tax reform...

Scenes from the September jobs report On Friday I highlighted the difference between the results of the establishment survey and the household survey.  A 2006 paper from the BLS (pdf) explaining the differences in how jobs are counted in the two surveys shows us why: Interviewers from the Census Bureau contact households and ask questions regarding the labor force status of members of the household during the calendar week that includes the 12th...

The Tax-Cut Framework Won’t Create Jobs and Digs the Inequality Ditch even Deeper Marcus Ryu, a self-described Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created, with others, a company now worth $5 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, argues in today’s Op-Ed section of the New York Times that “Tax Cuts Won’t Create Jobs“, NY Times (Oct. 9, 2017), at A23 (the title in the digital edition is different from the print title:  Why Corporate Tax Cuts Won’t Create...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Social Justice: Debt, Solidarity or Care? Mozi: scholar and activist   How do we think about the obligation of social justice?  The dominant American political culture is based on individualist values: you have a right to do whatever you want, and the main problem is how to prevent you and other rights-bearing individuals from getting in each other’s way.  Without extra considerations, social justice...

Scenes from the September jobs report On Friday I highlighted the difference between the results of the establishment survey and the household survey.  A 2006 paper from the BLS (pdf) explaining the differences in how jobs are counted in the two surveys shows us why: Interviewers from the Census Bureau contact households and ask questions regarding the labor force status of members of the household during the calendar week that includes the 12th...

September jobs report: establishment survey stinks, but household survey rocks! HEADLINES: -33,000 jobs lost U3 unemployment rate down -0.2% from 4.4% to 4.2% (new low) U6 underemployment rate down -0.3% from 8.6% to 8.3% (new low) Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now:  down -216,000 from 5.844 million to 5.628 million Part time for economic...

Part of Patriotism is Paying Taxes As Americans, we pay taxes to allow our government to support important activities that we as individuals or individual businesses either can’t do at all or can’t do as successfully.  Both individuals and businesses benefit from government, so that paying taxes is a wonderful exercise in patriotism. For individuals, the idea of paying taxes as patriotism may be obvious to many of us, because we think that taxes are an...

A thought for Sunday: of basic decency and humanity, and how the economy is shoring up the GOP A few threads of the Trump malAdministration came together this past week. The latest attempt to overturn Obamacare confronted Trump with a choice between his two main goals: basking in a Trump triumph vs. erasing all of Obama’s programs from the history books (in retaliation for Obama humiliating him at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011). At the...

When attempting to repeal and not really replace Obamacare, various Republicans demonstrated opposition to the idea of insurance. They objected that healthy people shouldn’t subsidize the health care of sick people — that is their honest view of health insurance is that they are against it. I didn’t keep track of recent examples, googled, and have old examples Paul Ryan (paraphrased — listen to him if you must — I can’t force myself to listen) “The...

Ex-hurricane trend in September industrial production is positive As I outlined earlier this week, a reasonable temporary workaround for industrial production unaffected by the recent hurricanes is to average the 4 regional Fed surveys, minus Dallas, plus the Chicago PMI. Over the long run, each +5 in the average of the indexes is consistent with a +.1 in the manufacturing component of industrial production. Because these indexes have been running “hot”...