Must-read: Matthew Yglesias: “2015: The Year Congress Started Working Again”
Matthew Yglesias: 2015: The Year Congress Started Working Again: “The story of the 2015 legislating boom… …is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan...
View ArticleMust-read: Tod Kelly: “Broken Elephants, Part I: Donald Trump and the Triumph...
Must-Read: The key question: How is one to attempt to do technocratic politics in the face of a massively dysfunctional Republican primary electorate and legislative right wing? Tod Kelly: Broken...
View ArticleMust-read: McKay Coppins: “The Gospel According to Trump”
Must-Read: McKay Coppins: The Gospel According to Trump: “Trump’s religious posturing is not about theology… [but] about branding… …dated… by design… rooted in a gnawing nostalgia and economic anxiety...
View ArticleMust-read: Simon Wren-Lewis: “The Dead Hand of Austerity; Left and Right”
Must-Read: There is an alternative branch of the quantum-mechanical wave-function multiverse in which we reality-based economists got behind the “safe asset shortage” view of our current malaise back...
View ArticleMust-read: Richard Mayhew: “CHIPPING Away at Uninsurance”
Richard Mayhew: CHIPPING Away at Uninsurance: “The Arkansas Times named its person of the year… …all the Arkansans who are newly insured. There was one vignette that stuck with me: The average high...
View ArticleA Non-Sokratic Dialogue on Social Welfare Functions: Hoisted from the...
A Non-Sokratic Dialogue on Social Welfare Functions: Hoisted from the Archives from 2003: Glaukon: ‘Professor!’ Agathon: ‘Professor! Good to see you. Getting coffee?’ Glaukon: ‘Yes. I’m teaching. I...
View ArticleMust-read: Mark Thoma: “Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders”
Must-Read: Mark Thoma: Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders: “the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities… …in response to Mitt Romney’s claim during his presidential campaign that many...
View ArticleWhy don’t we have a better press corps yet?
I am beginning to think that the highly-estimable Kevin Drum needs his meds adjusted–not those affecting the rest of his body, those seem to going better than I had expected, but rather those affecting...
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Mid-February musings on the economics, sociology, and psychology of Obamacare...
ObamaCare: How Is It Doing? There have been three very surprising things with respect to Obamacare implementation so far. The first is the surge in enrollment in employer-sponsored insurance. The fear...
View ArticleMust-read: Josh Barro: “Rubio Tax Cut Got Bigger and Bigger”
Must-Read: Josh Barro: Rubio Tax Cut Got Bigger and Bigger: “If you want an insight into what Senator Marco Rubio’s instincts on policy are… …just look at what happened when he got his hands on another...
View ArticleMust-read: Martin Wolf: “China’s Struggle for a New Normal”
Must-Read: Martin Wolf: China’s Struggle for a New Normal: “Beijing must be decisive and yet responsive to the needs of the people… …At present, it seems strangely indecisive on the economy and yet...
View ArticleMust-Read: Wolgang Munchau: The Errors Behind Europe’s Many Crises
Must-Read: Wolgang Munchau: The Errors Behind Europe’s Many Crises: “The EU was wrong to construct a single currency without a proper banking union… …wrong to create a passport-free travel zone without...
View ArticleMust-Read: Matthew Yglesias: “Brian D. McKenzie’s ‘Political Perceptions in...
Must-Read: Racial animosity, myths of betrayal, and fear of poverty and economic insecurity all combined together in a cocktail–but at least it’s an ethos! Matthew Yglesias: “Brian D. McKenzie’s...
View ArticleMust-Read: Paul Krugman: The Pathos of Republican Reformers
Must-Read: Paul, there is an alternate world out there in which the Democratic Party was taken over by people whose views of good economic policy are as… unrealistic… as those of the WSJ Editorial...
View ArticleMust-read: Simon Wren-Lewis: “The Dead Hand of Austerity; Left and Right”
Must-Read: There is an alternative branch of the quantum-mechanical wave-function multiverse in which we reality-based economists got behind the “safe asset shortage” view of our current malaise back...
View ArticleMust-read: Juan Linz: “The Perils of Presidentialism”
Must-Read: Juan Linz’s “The Perils of Presidentialism” is a rather good analysis of Richard Nixon and his situation, but a rather bad analysis of Barack Obama and his. In a way, the...
View ArticleMust-read: The Economist: “Chairman of Everything”
Must-Read: I do not understand China. But it now looks more likely than not to me that Xi Jinping’s rule will lose China a decade, if not half a century… The Economist: Chairman of Everything: “Two...
View ArticleMust-read: Simon Wren-Lewis: “The Financial Crisis, Austerity and the Shift...
Must-Read: Simon Wren-Lewis: The Financial Crisis, Austerity and the Shift from the Centre: “Think of two separate one dimensional continuums… …one economic, with neoliberal at one end and statist at...
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Must-Read: Robert B. Reich: Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
Must-Read: Gene Smolensky says Bob Reich’s latest book is truly excellent: Robert B. Reich: Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few: “The New Property… The New Monopoly… The New Contracts… The New...
View ArticleMust-read: Megan McArdle: “Listen to the Victims of the Free Market”
Must-Read: For the most part, an excellent piece by Megan McArdle. But… McMegan: There is a lot of good reason to think that the elasticity of labor demand at the low end is about -0.2! That higher...
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