The Red White and Blue Pill
Obamacare isn’t complicated because government social insurance programs have to be complicated: neither Social Security nor Medicare are complex in structure. It’s complicated because political constraints made a straightforward single-payer system unachievable.
Pretty much.
Millionaire tax migration is a myth!
Those echoing Cuomo’s tax migration myth defend their argument by citing a decline in the number of New York millionaires from 2007 to 2009 after the state passed a tax surcharge. Yet, the real story is what Crain’s Business reports: “New York lost millionaires (between 2007 and 2009) primarily because New Yorkers made less money and saw their property values drop during the recession, not because they moved to other states.”
If you compare median incomes by zip code with property taxes by zip code you’ll see that the wealthy seem to live in places with significantly higher tax burdens. By choice.
Obamacare part-timism: A myth debunked.
My strong suspicion is that if the ACA has an impact on the labor force (which it probably will) it will be through a different mechanism. Right now “in order to qualify for health benefits” is a very good reason to work full-time, even if you’d rather have more free time and less money at your current wage level. The Affordable Care Act will make this benefit qualification rationale less compelling,
The changes to part time employment in the past few years has almost nothing to do with Obamacare and everything to do with improved scheduling and time management systems in retail, hospitality and fast food sectors.
the really crucial thing for the WH is a matter of principle: no deal unless the extortion ends. And Rs just can’t or won’t give up the idea that they deserve to be rewarded for not blowing up the world.
Krugman nails it. Obama was too easy on the GOP early on thinking they would reward his cooperation. He let think this as a valuable tactic. And now it has to end.
The Tea Party thinks it hates Wall Street. It doesn’t.
many Tea Party Republicans are in favor of the same bills favored by the financial industry. Take the Financial Takeover Repeal Act of 2013, a one-line bill sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) that repeals Dodd-Frank and replaces it with nothing. This bill has 22 co-sponsors this year, including notable Tea Party senators such Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
The best way to explain the Tea Party and Wall Street is The enemy of my imaginary enemy is my imaginary friend. The Tea Party is in favor of imaginary Randian makers and opposed to imaginary Randian looters. Wall Street thinks the same. The only rift is who they imagine the looters and makers are. This is the problem with Randian thinking.
State tax climate: Tax Foundation shows taxes don’t matter
Austerity pushing Europe into social and economic decline, says Red Cross
“Many from the middle class have spiralled down to poverty. The amount of people depending on Red Cross food distributions in 22 of the surveyed countries has increased by 75% between 2009 and 2012. More people are getting poor, the poor are getting poorer.”
Sad thing is that many will read that and blame the Red Cross handouts for creating poverty and dependance.
Austerity isn’t working.
Janet Yellen on macroprudential regulation
Yglesias does a good job summarizing a kind of dry speech. I don’t think anyone should be worried about her being unqualified.
The Debt Ceiling and the Housing Bust
You can argue that these spending cuts wouldn’t have as much impact as the housing bust, because payment would be delayed, not cancelled, and at least some players would continue to expect eventual payment. On the other hand, as I pointed out in my last post, this time around we would have disconnected the automatic stabilizers — as GDP fell, revenues would fall, forcing another round of spending cuts, and so on.
GOP seems to prefer vicious cycles to virtuous ones.
Krugman: Automatic Destabilizers
The immediate question is whether Treasury can, in fact, “prioritize” — pay interest on the debt while stiffing everyone else, from vendors to Social Security recipients. If they can, they might choose to do this to avoid financial meltdown.
My worry s that once people stop getting paid the GOP will decided that they have more leverage and make greater demands.