by Bill Gale EconoFact The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) was the most sweeping realignment of the U.S. tax code in over three decades. It lowered tax rates, simplified taxes, raised the government debt, and was regressive, benefitting people who are well off more than the middle-class and the poor. Many provisions of the TCJA expire in 2025 unless action is preserves them. What would the expiration, or the continuation, of these...

from Lars Syll Based on our interviews, heterodox economics appears to be a positive project, inevitably defined somewhat in terms of the mainstream but not exhaustively so. It is also efficacious, with policy and real-world impact. It is a complex object, not amenable to definition by a single criterion. Its dimensions are partly intellectual, in terms of what it believes. It holds a realist position. It is concerned with asymmetric power relations, in the economy and in the economics...

As I posted yesterday, Medicare Advantage, which now covers more than half of the Medicare-eligible population, is a rip-off for taxpayers and for policy holders. Apparently, this is finally sinking in for hospitals and health systems across the country:“In 2023, Becker’s began reporting on hospitals and health systems nationwide that dropped some or all of their Medicare Advantage contracts.“Data on this topic is limited. In January, the Healthcare...

An excellent take on taxing the Black poor and the poor in general. It and its attachments are a good read which is why it is here. Taken from an advertisement. Tell the House and Senate: It’s time to make our tax code more equitable. The racial wealth gap has become wider during the past couple of decades. Significant economic events such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic have drastically shifted wealth towards the well-off....

Previouly . . . As Dr. Perry Wilson explains; “Different chronic diseases have different patterns of price increases. The biggest increase was seen in diabetes care (1993 – 2013) and driven largely by the rising prices of pharmaceuticals” of which the cost of manufacturing did not increase. Now Secretary of HHS, Alex Azar as the CEO of Eli Lilly raised the price of the century old drug Humalog used to treat diabetes by 345% taking it from...

by Merrill Goozner GoozNews The 2022 Washburn fire nearly reached Grizzly Giant, the giant sequoia thought to be somewhere between 2000 and 3000 years old. Only the heroic efforts of park rangers and firefighters saved the tree: But the fire’s aftermath could be seen throughout the southern portion of the park. Started by man, exacerbated by misguided fire suppression strategies (now abandoned), and fueled by a ten-year drought...

Eating cats and dogs .[embedded content]

System Dynamics was first developed in the 1950s by Jay W. Forrester at MIT. Initially, it was used to study industrial processes. Forrester's big idea was to use feedback loops and time delays to understand how different parts of a system interact with one another. He published the groundbreaking book Industrial Dynamics in 1961, which laid the foundation for this field. In the 1970s, System Dynamics gained wider attention with the release of the famous book The Limits to Growth, created...

 The discovery of a monetary approach, which, in this case, not only relates to a field that I was not familiar with, but also constitutes a total challenge to my own knowledge of public finance management, which I have practiced throughout my career, is not something trivial. So I decided to tell my own story.Interesting personal story.MMT FranceHow I came to MMTRobert CauneauThe article is available in French here.

I follow Dean Baker because it is easy to do so. I do not end up pondering whether something written makes sense or not. Perhaps, my agreement is due to my seeing the same issues and understanding them. However let’s face it, bad news media does sell advertisements which pays for this. If I told you everything was rosy as documented at Angry Bear, would you read us? You would probably shrug your shoulders and yawn. If we give you something to...