Robert Frank at the Wall Street Journal contends that the rich don’t need the rest of us all that much (hat tip reader Don B): Late last year, the U.S. economy experienced a surprising decoupling. As stocks boomed, the wealthy bounced back. And while the Main Street economy was wracked by high unemployment and the […]
Read more...A school of political and economic argument goes something like this: every economic ill can be cured by tax cuts. It’s clearly rubbish when stated that way, yet the same logic is given far too much credence every time it is overused. A very good piece by William Gale at the Washington Post, “Five myths […]
Read more...This post first appeared on February 14, 2007 An excellent column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, where he is the lead economics editor. Starting with principles put forward by Ben Bernanke in his recent speech on income inequality, Wolf concludes that America cannot do without some form of a welfare state, specifically improved […]
Read more...By Paul Jay, the CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network; originally posted at New Deal 2.0 Police brutality at the G-20 protests in Toronto targeted freedom of speech and assembly, putting the world’s poor and working people on notice. The Toronto G-20 summit sent a message to poor and working people in […]
Read more...If you have any doubts about how easy it is for someone who works hard in the US to get ahead, consider this factoid from Martin Wolf’s latest comment in the Financial Times, on Raghuram Rajan’s new book (see Satyajit Das’ review here: Thus, Prof Rajan notes that “of every dollar of real income growth […]
Read more...One has to be cautious in invoking cultural stereotypes. However, when the subject of defaults or mortgage mods comes up here and in other forums, almost inevitably some readers will start off on a bit of a rant: “I pay my mortgage/rent, why should these people get a break?” And these discussions often take a […]
Read more...The New York Times yesterday featured an article by Yale economist Robert Shiller in which he discussed how financial reform had fallen short of addressing the conditions that caused the crisis. He focused on the failure to implement effective pay reform at the large financial firms that too big or otherwise too crucial to fail: […]
Read more...A fresh Gallup poll reports that Americans are most worried about….federal debts (hat tip Marshall Auerback via the Atlantic): Gallup also provided a tally of how members of each party view the issue: It would appear the ground has been laid rather effectively for (among other things) an assault on Social Security and Medicare. As […]
Read more...The reaction in the Western media to the doubling of entry-level salaries at the Foxconn factories in Shenzhen was as if it was a change in the world order. Chinese workers treated as if they have bargaining power! Honda increasing wages 24%! Beijing increasing municipal pay 20%! Increases like this do not come out of […]
Read more...Brad DeLong points out that Ronald Reagan was far more concerned about unemployment than Team Obama (or Washington generally) is, and also took far more aggressive measures to combat it. From The Week (hat tip reader Marshall): By the start of 1983, labor unions were frantically giving back previously-promised wage increases and offering wage cuts […]
Read more...Simon Schama tonight warns in the Financial Times that revolutionary rage is close to the boiling point in Europe and the US : Historians will tell you there is often a time-lag between the onset of economic disaster and the accumulation of social fury. In act one, the shock of a crisis initially triggers fearful […]
Read more...Yves here. We’ve tended to focus on unsavory practices on the institutional end of the financial services market because they played a major role in the financial crisis, yet have not gotten the media coverage they merit. But some questionable conduct on the retail end only gets intermittent attention, even though it is also a […]
Read more...The Institute on Assets and Social Policy published a report on Monday based on economic data from the same 2000 families from 1984 to 2007 (hat tip Michael Powell). Its sobering results likely understates the case, since it does not include the post financial crisis period. The study found that the median wealth gap between […]
Read more...The first part of this two part series proved to be very popular among blog readers, given the level of comments, so I thought I’d feature the second part, which was posted by Real News Networks on Monday. Enjoy!
Read more...Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!
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