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In the middle of his evisceration of the House Republicans’ attack on the Affordable Care Act, MIT’s Jonathan Gruber notes that the attack claims that the ACA’s tax credits are a form of spending. But…but…but…Saint Grover says that we cannot get rid of any corporate welfare tax credits because that is a tax increase! So [...]
Archive for the ‘Macroeconomic Policy’ Category
October 31st, 2011
September 27th, 2011
My Cornell colleague Bob Hockett has written a scorchingly satirical essay about the Republican mental malady that’s led them to oppose economic stimulus in the name of fiscal probity. I liked his title so much that I’ve commissioned my sons (who are two thirds of the rock band The Nepotist) to write a song with [...]
September 16th, 2011
Texas unemployment rises to 8.5%, the highest in 24 years. (h/t TPM). Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, clearly a basket case due to liberal policies, the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.4%, the lowest in two and a half years. It should be mentioned that Texas job losses stem from public sector reductions. Since public sector workers like [...]
August 23rd, 2011
Among the many amazing things the gods of irony and absurdity have showered upon us in the last decade or so, I have to score serious discussion of a gold standard for money very high. Many years ago an economist friend explained that Marx’s labor theory of value was correct, but trivially correct, because there [...]
August 13th, 2011
Category: Macroeconomic Policy, Watching Conservatives
Steve Benen: Current GOP officials aren’t just wrong about stimulus, the timing of budget cuts, taxes, debt reduction, or monetary policy — they’re wrong about all of them at the same time.
August 9th, 2011
Category: Macroeconomic Policy
Peter Cohan and I fail to disagree about the downgrade: like the debt ceiling fiasco, it’s a distraction from the straightforward task of re-stimulating the economy to put people back to work.
June 1st, 2011
Some observers, including Garrett Epps, who is a legal scholar, and Bruce Bartlett, who is not, have argued that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment makes the debt ceiling invalid. That Section reads, in relevant part: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned. That’s it, at [...]
May 19th, 2011
Garrett Epps thinks that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional; Bruce Bartlett agrees. I’m not so sure; the question would turn on whether appropriations and entitlements that the Treasury would need to borrow to pay for would be regarded as “public debt” within the meaning of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment. You could argue it both [...]
