How Donald Trump is Channeling Machiavelli
This past weekend, Donald Trump and JD Vance accused their Democratic opponents of plotting to kill Trump, implicitly threatening to prosecute them should they win. As shocking as it sounds, it was unremarkable since personal threats are a common and menacing feature of their campaign. Since Trump announced his bid for a second term, he has threatened to investigate and… Continue reading
How to Create New Jobs in a Troubled Economy
The inconvenient truth that lies behind this week’s White House jobs summit is that there are no magic bullets for an economy thrown over the cliff by a huge financial crisis. Even with all of our stimulus, bailouts, tax breaks and special Fed lending programs, job losses continue to mount, dampening investment and overall demand. That’s not all: Despite the…Continue reading
Storms on the Economy’s Horizon
The high economic anxieties that most Americans felt six months ago may have faded, but count me among economists who are still very concerned. Sure, the last GDP report came in at 3.5 percent, and the next one should show comparable gains. Virtually all of those gains, however, come from the temporary stimulus and unusual inventory corrections. Once those factors…Continue reading
Health Care’s Raw Deal for Middle-Class Families
Health care reform advocates often point out that the costs of reform should be weighed against the costs of doing nothing. Unfortunately, that’s very hard to do, since our health care and tax arrangements mask those costs so well. I suspect that if middle-class Americans had a better grasp of what health care really costs them, and how those costs…Continue reading
A New Economic Strategy for Hard Times and Good Times
You might not know it from what passes for economic commentary on cable TV, but the U.S. economy remains pretty sick. Last week’s report of 3.5 percent GDP growth in the third quarter seemed like cause to celebrate — until you looked more carefully at the data and saw that virtually all of the upside came from temporary government stimulus.…Continue reading
Scoping Out “Plan B” for Climate Change
Beyond the public’s view, major players in the climate change debate are reassessing their options. In fact, as the prospects of Congress approving a cap-and-trade system fade, discussion is shifting to “Plan B.†One reason is that the version of cap-and-trade which just barely passed the House of Representatives a few months ago, the Waxman-Markey bill, made so many concessions…Continue reading
Who Really Will Pay for Goldman Sachs’ $23 Billion in…
It was an auspicious week for the touchy issues surrounding executive pay. One after another, President Obama’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, announced new restrictions for AIG executives; Goldman Sachs was reported to be putting aside $23 billion for this year’s bonus pool, the largest anywhere, ever; and Elinor Ostrom from Indiana University shared the Nobel Prize in economics for her…Continue reading
What Washington Should Understand and Do to Create Jobs
Policymakers and pundits finally are worried about a “jobless recovery†– and our actual prospects are worse than that term suggests. The initial expansion we may already be experiencing will be notable not for a lack of new jobs, as the phrase “jobless recovery†suggests, but for substantial, continued job losses. Total employment will continue to decline for many months…Continue reading
The Latest Attack on the Census is an Attack on…
The latest fight over the Decennial Census is part of a 30 years’ war over efforts to count everyone in America, including immigrants, minorities and poor people. It’s become an ongoing war, because the Census carries such large consequences. The Constitution mandates a census every decade, because the founders saw a regular, state-by-state population count as the best way to…Continue reading