Ethersnap
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
Interests:
Current events, yoga, economics, food, travel, and all things cute.
People get very angry before they change their mind,” he said. “Economics is counterintuitive. It just is.” I told him that surely is true, but his ideas are counterintuitive even to people well versed in economics.
Romney’s Former Bain Partner Makes a Case for Inequality - NYTimes.com
This is so gauche and horrifying.
Conard, as if you took so many risks in your life. HBS, then Bain, then Wasserstein Perella and Bain Cap. That is soooo risky for your financial prospects, right?! Who can say with a straight face that turning down law school to go to HBS is a true risk?
According to our analysis of current tax rates and their elasticity, the revenue-maximizing top federal marginal income tax rate would be in or near the range of 50%-70% (taking into account that individuals face additional taxes from Medicare and state and local taxes). Thus we conclude that raising the top tax rate is very likely to result in revenue increases at least until we reach the 50% rate that held during the first Reagan administration, and possibly until the 70% rate of the 1970s.
Diamond and Saez: High Tax Rates Won’t Slow Growth - WSJ.com
Pleasantly surprised that WSJ even published this.
Earth to Ben Bernanke: Chairman Bernanke Should Listen to Professor Bernanke - NYTimes.com
The Fed under Bernanke is by no means the worst sinner in this failure of intellect and will, and you can argue that Ben Bernanke has done a better job than anyone else who might have held his position. Yet the fact is, he has not done remotely enough. The Fed, under its eminent chairman, was supposed to be an important part of the solution to mass unemployment. That isn’t happening.
First (?) Annual Princeton Economics Department Cage Match: Krugman vs. Bernanke!
In a way, the United States is becoming like Old Europe, which is very strange in historical perspective,” Mr. Piketty said. “The United States used to be very egalitarian, not just in spirit but in actuality. Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France. And very high taxes on the very rich — that was invented in the United States,” he said.
For Economists Saez and Piketty, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start - NYTimes.com
We read some of Piketty and Saez’s work the other week in POL 352!
There’s something intuitively compelling about the idea that America’s growing income inequality helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis. The narrative, which got an official stamp from Congress’ Democrat-led Joint Economic Committee back in 2010, goes something like this: As middle class wages…
Hmmm…
(Source: The Atlantic)
Countries should replace much of their existing national debt with shares of the “earnings” of their economies. This would allow them to better manage their financial obligations and could help prevent future financial crises. It might even lower countries’ borrowing costs in the long run.
(via Big Data’s Impact in the World - NYTimes.com)
“It’s a revolution,” says Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.”
Rise of the number crunchers?
Daily chart: this Chinese new year could bring good fortune to stockmarket investors. Between 1900 and 2011, the nine previous dragon years have seen America’s Dow Jones Industrial Average price index increase by an average of 7.7% in real terms.
In the end, however, one has to ask a more basic question. Why do we care about inequality at all?
We should all seek a prosperous, growing economy, with less poverty, and where everyone can rise as far as their talent and drive will take them. Equality? Who needs it?
The Income-Inequality Myth - Michael Tanner - National Review Online
…so many things to say in response to this that it’s not even funny. I’m consistently surprised by the nerve of ostensibly well-educated people to totally ignore the relevant issues and hand-wave their way around answering tough questions or formulating real solutions.
