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Socioeconomic Inequality
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Legal Disclaimer: I link to content created by others. If you believe I have violated your copyright please let me know and I will take down the link (immediately). The Activist(s) Corner (Issues to Get Your Blood Boiling): Too Smart To Fail – via The Browser – America suffers three big self-inflicted wounds in barely a decade: “New Economy” bubble, war in Iraq, banking crash. Yet nobody gets held to account, nobody gets shamed.
Simoleon Sense
Robert Reich
Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state. But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.Blog Contributors Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter , Google+ and Facebook . E-mail him here .
The March jobs report in two graphs - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post
I’m not saying that congressional Republicans don’t care about poor people. But they really care about rich people. So far, the policy agenda they’ve pushed has been a mixture of very expensive tax cuts for the very wealthy and very deep cuts to a lot of programs that focus on the very poor. It’s . . . curious. Think back to the tax deal. The GOP’s demands were: 1) the extension of the Bush tax cuts for high-earners; and 2) a massive cut in the estate tax.
Republican policies don’t care about poor people - Ezra Klein - The Washington Post
Do news and history always trump fiction? Read an “old” newspaper, from the ancient pre-Internet era of December of 1984: “The Reagan Administration is considering a plan to would place the now autonomous US Federal Reserve under some form of administrative control, The US Treasury Secretary, Don Regan, said yesterday.” That was AP wire copy, and the story went national. Long forgotten today, given the near-hysteria and requisite orthodoxy on the American right that only tight money is sound policy and patriotic, is that the Reagan White House tried to skin Fed Chief Paul Volcker alive back in 1984. And not just Volcker—they wanted to eviscerate the Federal Reserve Board, and shift control of the money supply into the Oval Office. Inflation in 1984 had just dropped under 5 percent, and the Reaganauts wanted the Fed to print a lot more money, and keep the economy flourishing.
Historinhas
Apr 05 I travel a great deal so I frequently find myself in the company of TSA agents who check my boarding pass, remind me to remove my shoes, jacket, belt, laptop, liquids, and all items from my pockets (including the previously inspected boarding pass), and then screen these things, as well as myself. Every time I find myself standing in line, in my socks, I inevitably contemplate the efficiency of the system. It’s only half an hour or so per flight, but when you multiply that number by all the people traveling in the United States, it’s a tremendous amount of time, effort, and money. And this comes not only from the TSA, but also in the form of lost productivity of all the people standing in line in various states of undress.
Dan Ariely
Economics and Politics by Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal - NYTimes.com
I’ve been getting the predictable hysterical reactions to today’s column. And it’s true — I’m a Sharia Jewish atheist Marxist who hates America! Bwahahaha!
Hey! Even I was tricked by the three-card monte of the recent GOP/AEI research on growth-through-austerity, and I’m trying to watch the red Ace very closely as these conservatives spin the cards around. Where I thought they were actually putting their markers down on the full “growth through austerity” case, where cutting the deficit is the most important thing to do for the economy right now, they each had an escape hatch where they can say “umm, we actually just said growth would be boosted a bit from ‘Non-Keynesian’ elements like confidence. Not that the economy would expand.” Palming the expansionary card, everything left on the table is higher unemployment, lower GDP, and a transfer from necessary services towards corporate tax cuts.
Krugman and Karl Smith on the Fine Print in the Recent Growth-Through-Austerity Reports « Rortybomb
The Exceptional Mr. Greenspan - NYTimes.com
Alan Greenspan continues his efforts to cement his reputation as the worst ex-Fed chairman in history; in today’s FT, he comes out for a repeal of financial regulations designed to prevent a repeat of the crisis for which he, more than any other individual, bears personal responsibility. To be honest, I didn’t know quite how to respond; I was, very nearly, left speechless by the lack of self-awareness on display. But Henry Farrell shows us the way , pointing out that Greenspan’s piece contains this remarkable passage: Today’s competitive markets, whether we seek to recognise it or not, are driven by an international version of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that is unredeemably opaque.
John Taylor But when Taylor leaps from that correlation to saying that what we need for economic recovery is to “lighten up on the anti-business sentiment coming out of Washington,” I wonder what is going on in his head. John Taylor BEA It’s mostly the housing bust! Yes, business investment is low — but no lower than you might expect given the depressed state of the economy.
What's Behind Low Investment? - NYTimes.com
The 8th edition of my intermediate macroeconomics text will come out in June, ready for fall classes. One significant change in this edition is that some of the existing material has been reorganized. Over the past several years, monetary policymakers at the Federal Reserve have engaged in a variety of unconventional measures to prop up a weak banking system and promote recovery from a deep recession.
Greg Mankiw's Blog
"Demand, Supply" helps students learn about the principles of economics. The song covers markets, equilibrium, monopolies, incentives, and more. Teachers and students can find out more about the principles taught in this song by visiting Professor Greg Mankiw's economics blo g. His "10 Principles of Economics" guided development of this song.