Thursday, April 30, 2015

Congressional Allowances

Your mom or dad might have given you an allowance for mowing the yard, taking out the trash, cleaning your room or washing the dishes. What do members of Congress do to EARN their allowances?

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Baltimore

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the Senate floor: "We cannot condone the violence we see in Baltimore, but we must not ignore the despair and hopelessness that gives rise to this kind of violence. So let’s condemn the violence, but let’s not ignore the underlying problem."

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Friday, April 24, 2015

Over Taxed? They spent $1 Trillion on Stock Buybacks

According to a study by the Roosevelt Institute (Disgorge the Cash), businesses once borrowed to invest and improve their company's long-term performance. But for the past 30 years business investment has been replaced by shareholder payouts.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Increased Productivity has No Affect on Wages

Or very little — at least, not so much these days. Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, recently writes:

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

A Day in the Life of a Welfare Bum

The very first thing you do after you wake up in the morning is to

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Just One Reason why Bernie Sanders should Run

Why Bernie should be POTUS --- Just one of many reasons: Literally rolling up his sleeves and protesting a trade deal that would throw Americans out of work, Senator Bernie Sanders marched with leaders of the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations to a rally outside the U.S. trade representative’s office.

Monday, April 20, 2015

New Study: Low Wages Cost Taxpayers Big

From another new study, this time from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education (April 2015) "Poverty-Level Wages Cost U.S. Taxpayers $152.8 Billion Each Year in Public Support for Working Families"

They report that wages of the bottom decile of earners were 5 percent lower in 2013 than in 1979. Trends since the early 2000s are even more pronounced. Inflation-adjusted wage growth from 2003 to 2013 was either flat or negative for the entire bottom 70 percent of the wage distribution ...

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Would Hillary Clinton Expand Social Security?

So far, as Talking Points Memo points out, Hillary Clinton is noncommittal on expanding Social Security. On the other hand, two other potential Democratic primary contenders — former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — have championed Social Security expansion, which primarily involves providing more generous benefits and paying for them by lifting the income cap on payroll taxes. The cap is currently $118,500 — which is less than congressional salaries ($174,000).

The Real Keynesians are the Chinese

(* Editor's note: Most of the comments and links below are excerpts from readers at Mark Thoma's blog.)

The Real Keynesians were the Chinese. Not only did they invest massively in infrastructure, they have strongly emphasized increasing domestic consumption as well. As a result, they have experienced strong economic growth ... China's official policy now is to increase domestic consumption in order not to be as dependent on exports as it has been hitherto. Obviously China is far behind the U.S., but our policy, unlike China's, has not been to increase consumption as the late great economist, John Maynard Keynes, had advocated:

Congress Never Listens People, only Money. Why?

A new Pew Research study reports some 61 percent of Americans feel bothered “a lot” that “wealthy people don’t pay their fair tax share". Besides just campaign finance reform, poll, after poll, after poll, after poll, after poll, after poll, shows most Americans also favor raising taxes on the very wealthy. So if Congress is supposed to represent the majority of the people in a democracy, why haven't they raised taxes on the wealthy — or reformed campaign finance laws?

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Money can't buy Class

But a lot of extra cash would sure help, especially if someone wants to be considered a part of the "upper class" of our society; but that is only when measured by one's personal wealth and/or income (and not by their moral fortitude). A lot of us still wonder — besides just plain luck, how did so many rich people get to be soooo rich in the first place?

Monday, April 13, 2015

The Long-term Unemployed: Where are the 99ers?

The share of the unemployed who were out of work for 52 weeks or longer reached a record high of 31.9 percent in 2011. The share unemployed for 99 weeks or longer reached a record peak at 15.1 percent in 2011 (99 weeks = 1 year, 10 months and 3 weeks). There were 6.8 million unemployed over 27 weeks in April 2010.

According to a new report from the Department of Labor (Trends in Long-term Unemployment), people unemployed in 2014 couldn't count on a college degree to save them from long-term joblessness. The data also show it doesn't matter what industry you work in — and confirmed previous studies, that the longer you're out of work, the less likely you are to get another job.

Progressivism may be "The New Center"

The Hill has a short article titled: "Reid, left push for liberal 2016 candidate" — reporting that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has joined a progressive group’s call for Hillary Clinton (or any other Democratic White House candidate) to run from the "left" in 2016. (We need a Democratic debate! — because not all Democrats want Hillary, and not because they're misogynist.)

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Richest Slumlord in America

(* Editor's note: This is from a joint investigation of The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times)

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Cut Defense Spending to Save Social Security, or Raise Taxes

Some people are saying we'll need to either make cuts in defense spending or Social Security, and that those are our only choices if we don't raise taxes. But with a GOP-dominated Congress, it won't mean increasing revenues by raising taxes on those who are most able to afford an increase.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Preying on the Ignorant

The Republican party's leaders (and the conservative media) uses moral issues and religious beliefs to divide voters to push their economic agenda of taxation, government spending and worker's rights — getting people to vote against their own best economic interests.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Inequality, Tax Breaks and Cement

Some passages from some recent posts I read (The last link I find particularly interesting).

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

24 Million Long-term Unemployed are M.I.A.

First, let's look at some numbers for a moment. They are just for last year — from December 2013 to December 2014.

1,688,000 less unemployed (the unemployment rate dropped)
1,092,000 less who were "long-term" unemployed
1,129,680 went on Social Security retirement or disability
3,116,000 net new jobs created
1,200,000 additional people "not in the labor force"
3,150,000 additional high school graduates

We'll be visiting those numbers again later in this post.