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Unemployment Benefits and Unemployment
On Up with Chris Hayes today, one of the topics we discussed was the extension of unemployment insurance benefits. I’d like to take this opportunity to revise and extend my remarks on when and whether we should worry ...
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In his “Theodore Roosevelt” speech in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama heaped praise on a Minnesota company, Marvin Windows and Doors, for its worker-friendly policies. Marvin weathered a recession that battered the construction industry without laying off any of ...
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Pushing Back on Tylenol Hysteria
CORRECTION: Ack. I got the key stat in this piece wrong–there were 458 acetaminophen overdose deaths per year in the United States in the 1990s, not 458 over nine years. (In fairness, I was led by an erroneous correction to this ...
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Newt Gingrich on the GSE Model
This interview has been floating around the web a little bit, but I don’t think it’s gotten quite the attention it deserves. Back when Newt Gingrich was serving as Freddie Mac’s in-house historian, he did a Q&...
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Occupy DC and the Rule of Law
Over at Moneybox, Matt Yglesias writes that “a misguided offshoot of the Occupy DC movement managed to briefly occupy the vacant Franklin School building which the city is looking to sell. Their idea was to stage a sit-in ‘...
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In Defense of the Establishment
Conor Friedersdorf remarks on an interesting problem with Herman Cain’s campaign: Cain’s appeal is that he is an outsider who will challenge conventional wisdom in Washington. But because Cain’s policy expertise is so limited, ...
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Art Laffer Spouting Nonsense on 9-9-9
I guess somebody had to try to defend Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. Art Laffer does so in today’s Wall Street Journal, but his defense is really embarrassing.
First, Laffer describes the business tax component of 9...
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The Underpants Gnome Theory of Social Change
It’s not just me. Now Barney Frank is warning that Occupy Wall Street’s disdain for the political system renders them ineffective. He says:
[S]imply being in a public place and voicing your opinion in and ...
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9-9-9 Raises Taxes by 32 Percent for Sample Middle Class Family
ABC News has a story about how Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would affect middle class families. And the broad thrust of the piece is correct: while the plan wouldn’t much change the total amount of ...
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Steve Wozniak and Incentives
Over at ThinkProgress, Matt Yglesias looks at the relative fortunes of various tech billionaires and concludes that the estate tax can’t have much of an effect on technological output. In a previous post, he notes that Steve Jobs ...
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We Are the 99 Percent—Even Rich People
A lot of liberal bloggers are drooling over the We Are the 99 Percent blog that is associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. I actually find the blog pretty annoying. Partly that’s because because it is so heavy ...
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People—and Corporations—Who “Pay No Taxes”
Liberals often express consternation—justifiably—when politicians complain about roughly half of Americans “paying no taxes.” The real statistic is that about half of Americans pay no federal individual income tax. But most of those “...
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Nobody Made You Live in the Sticks
This weekend, a New York Times pieceon the impending financial collapse of the United States Postal Service includes this alarming fact:
Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent ...
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Are We Really Parsing the President's Summer Reading List Now?
Over on the main page, Tevi Troy looks through the list of books President Obama has bought on vacation. The list is heavy on fiction, which might be taken as a sign that Obama was in the mood to read ...
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Are the Super Committee’s Hands Really Tied on Taxes?
Over at Reuters, Jim Pethokoukis says that while the proposed debt ceiling deal would create a “Super Committee” with a mandate to reduce deficits, it would be nearly impossible for that committee to recommend tax increases. He quotes ...
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The Irresponsibility of Saying We’re “Bankrupt”
Over the last few years, too many conservative politicians and commentators have casually thrown around the idea that the United States is “bankrupt” or “insolvent” or that we “can’t afford to pay our ...
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Why the White House Will Win a Debt Limit Standoff
Matt Yglesias looks at the apparent collapse of talks on raising the debt ceiling and concludes that we’re headed for an impasse, where the federal government will soon have too little money to pay its bills. This won&...
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Today, the Editors have called for repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. I believe such a repeal would be a mistake. Medicare costs are expected to continue to explode over the next several decades, swallowing an ever larger share ...
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John Taylor on a 5 Percent Growth Target
John Taylor sticks up for Tim Pawlenty’s 5 percent real GDP growth target (which I have criticized). Taylor particularly focuses on the fact that the fraction of working-age adults who actually work is unusually low right now; he argues that ...
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Some Stray Thoughts on the Pawlenty Economic Address
I have a new column at City Journal Online about the economic policy address that Tim Pawlenty gave on Tuesday. Overall, I’m not impressed, either with his idea that we can achieve sustained real GDP growth of five ...
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Stupid Debt Brinksmanship
As Brian Beutler summarizes over at Talking Points Memo, a number of Republican officials (including Pat Toomey and Paul Ryan) are relying on advice that a brief default on federal bonds would not rattle the financial markets:
Ryan told [CNBC] ...
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Robert Kuttner on the Real Problem with Strauss-Kahn
At the Huffington Post, The American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner hits on the real Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal: the hotel room where he allegedly raped a maid was too fancy:
For demolishing the Socialists’ claim to speak for the ...
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Raise DC Cab Fares; Don't Create a Cartel
For a few years now, Washington D.C. cab drivers have been trying to get the city to impose a medallion system that would cap the number of cabs that may operate in the city.Medallions are a terrible idea ...
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Is Medicaid a welfare program?
Earlier this month, Matt Yglesias criticized Paul Ryan for characterizing the sharp Medicaid cuts in his budget plan as “welfare reform.” Yglesias notes that while a majority of Medicaid beneficiaries are low-income adults and children, a majority of ...
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How to block grant Medicaid
In my City Journal Online piece on the Paul Ryan budget’s over-reliance on optimistic targets for health care savings, I touch on the issue of Medicaid block grants. I think Medicaid block grants are a good idea, but ...
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Rahmbo vs. Chicago's public employee unions
I have a new piece today at PublicSectorInc.org about Chicago’s mayoral election, which will take place a week from today. Despite being a Democratic candidate in a left-leaning city, frontrunner Rahm Emanuel has been aimingsquarely for the ...
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ATR’s Silly Budget Balancing Plan
A couple of months ago, I expressed my interest in seeing a budget plan that meets a four-part test: “(1) keeps the full Bush tax cuts and (2) gets the deficit down to a sustainable level (3) in a reasonable time frame ...
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Democrats and the Deficit
Over the last few years, Democrats have had a field day pointing out (accurately) that Republicans were being wildly fiscally irresponsible. In fact, Republicans were such bad stewards of the federal budget that it was easy not to notice that ...
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What Would Really Happen if Congress Doesn’t Raise the Debt Limit?
Earlier this week, I wrote an article for RealClearMarkets that challenges the conventional wisdom that a failure to raise the debt limit would lead to an acute economic crisis. We’ve seen this claim made a number of places, ...
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Overcriminalization Hits the Barbershop
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Orange County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office has been enforcing Florida’s barber licensing requirements in an unusually aggressive way: conducting armed raids of barbershops, handcuffing barbers while their records are ...
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Obama’s “Decoupling” Proposal Is a Trap
The Obama Administration is now sending signals that it’s open to a temporary extension of all the Bush tax cuts. This is good news, as it means that the most economically beneficial parts of the cuts are now ...
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CBO Head: Raising Taxes on the Rich Will Shrink the Economy
Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf testified before the Senate Budget Committee today on long-term effects from extending the Bush tax cuts. The headline claim in his testimony is that an extension, whether full or partial, will reduce national income ...
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Where were you when the towers fell? Maybe not where you think
Today,Washington Post is asking peoplewhere they were and what they were doing when the September 11thattacks occurred, ahead of tomorrow’s anniversary. As with other tragedies like the Kennedy assassination and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (and ...
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Conservatives for a More Capricious Landmarks Bureaucracy
One bizarre aspect of the controversy regarding the Cordoba House development near Ground Zero is how many conservatives have fallen in behind the idea of an unelected body — New York’s Landmarks Preservation Commission — using its powers to prevent ...
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More on UI and Unemployment
Matt Yglesias responds to my post on Unemployment Insurance and links to some evidence that casts further doubt on negative incentive effects from UI. Particularly, he highlights a model (via Mike Konczal) of UI used in Austria, where workers take ...
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Last month, delegates to Maine’s state Republican convention junked the party’s proposed platform in favor of one promoted by tea-party activists. While a majority of its planks are unremarkable conservative proposals, the platform garnered some national ...
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Incoherent Public Opinion on Fiscal Policy
We often complain about elected officials being non-serious about fiscal discipline, but in terms of la-la-land budgeting, Congress has nothing on the American public.
This week’sEconomist/YouGov poll asked Americans about fiscal policy. First, they asked what ...
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David Brooks: Enjoy Deficit Reduction
David Brooks had a column in yesterday’s New York Times, arguing (in part) that the closing of America’s fiscal imbalance needs to be reframed as a happier activity. Unfortunately, I think he’s a bit too ...
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Oregon Lottery Profits Fall, So State Cuts Gambling Addiction Programs
Oregon’s lottery profits are off 20 percent from their 2008 peak, a combination of effects from the down economy and a bar smoking ban. (Oregon’s lottery includes so-called Video Lottery Terminals, video poker- and slot-style machines found in ...
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My Manhattan Institute colleague Diana Furchtgott-Roth has a good piece at Real Clear Markets today addressing the bipartisan Wyden-Gregg tax reform proposal. The proposal (from Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Judd Gregg) is an approximately revenue-neutral plan to broaden the ...
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On Medicare, Save Money Now
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) and Senator Ron Wyden (D) are out today with a joint proposal on Medicare reform, and structurally, the plan makes a lot of sense. The plan is built much like the “premium support” ...
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Corporate Welfare Fraud, Massachusetts Edition
Last year, Iowa’s film subsidy program was brought down in a fraud scandal. Now, Massachusetts’s film subsidy program has a scandal of its own:
A Los Angeles-based filmmaker was charged Friday with defrauding Massachusetts of almost $5 million in ...
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Car seats and birth rates
How much have increasingly tight laws on where your children may sit in your car–laws requiring children to sit in car seats until higher ages and weights, and laws barring young children from the front seat–affected birth rates?
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Why Not Medical Pricing Transparency?
Recently, my employer switched to a high-deductible health insurance plan, which means I’m paying at the margin for most of my health care. As a result, I have become more aware of the true cost of the care ...
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Is Majoring in "Classical Studies" a Good Idea?
Over at the Washington Examiner, David Freddoso sticks up for classics majors, after a poster on the “We Are the 99 Percent” blog has been mocked for bemoaning the unmarketability of her classics degree. Freddoso notes:
I got a Classical education ...
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Irwin Stelzer's Cultural Defense of 9-9-9
In the Weekly Standard, Irwin Stelzertakes to Herman Cain’s defense on the issue of 9-9-9. But rather than defending in any detail the substance of the plan (or perhaps even doing much research on it–Stelzer doesn’...
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Several New Problems For 9-9-9
Last week, I wrote that Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan includes a “lightly-modified VAT.” Since then, his campaign has modified the plan posted on the web, and the proposal got even vattier.
Previously he proposed a 9 percent tax on ...
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Herman Cain: Against a VAT Before He Was For It
Here’s Herman Cain, one year ago, on the topic of a tax system that combines sales tax with income tax:
In every country that has established a VAT with the promise of reducing its nationaldebt, the VAT has ...
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Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Has a VAT PLUS a Sales Tax
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan includes a personal income tax, a business tax, and a sales tax, all at flat rates of nine percent. Bruce Bartlett critiques the plan in the New York Times today, and he flags a ...
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Occupy Wall Street and Student Loans
One remarkable facet of Occupy Wall Street is how focused the protesters are on student loan debt. A few thoughts about this:
Many college grads have good reason to be upset. Educational inflation has been running far ahead of general ...
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An Argument Against Taking Occupy Wall Street Seriously
Yesterday, Reihan wrote that labor unions and groups like MoveOn should hesitate before getting into bed with Occupy Wall Street, given its anarchist roots. Then I went on CBC News to debate a representative of OWS, and came away convinced ...
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You’re Not Allowed to Walk in the Road
Matt Yglesias, who grew up in Manhattan, makes a sensible observation about the arrest of 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters who tried to walk to Brooklyn in the driving lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday:
Realistically, New York City is extremely ...
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Center for American Progress Playing Misleading Baseline Games
Update: Seth Hanlon has now revised his post at ThinkProgress to include an apples-to-apples comparison of tax changes under the Zero Plan using a current law baseline.
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Today, the Center for American Progress is out with an attack on Jon ...
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Debt Ceiling Deal—Less Than Meets the Eye
My stated preference has long been for a clean debt ceiling hike. Failing that, I wanted to see a debt ceiling deal that contained as little policy as possible, or at least very little bad policy. This deal meets those ...
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Gene Weingarten, whose work I normally love, is currently running an inane campaign to get people to stop reclining their seats in economy class on airplanes. He’s even put together a passive-aggressive card that you can hand to ...
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Will Treasury Really Refuse to Prioritize Payments?
UPDATE: Bloomberg reports that, contrary to the Times article cited below, Treasury will announce tomorrow that its contingency plan in the event the debt ceiling is reached will include prioritizing payments to bondholders. This is good news.
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Tomorrow, after ...
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We Don't Need to Balance the Budget—Ever.
Kevin Williamson has a post up today accusing Republicans of not having a realistic vision for budget sustainability, and for the most part I think he’s right. However, he makes one very common error among budget hawks.
Kevin ...
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Temporary Tax Increases Actually Proving Temporary
Milton Friedman famously said that that there is “nothing so permanent as a temporary government program,” and this adage is often applied to proposals for temporary state tax increases to address budget gaps. But states that have enacted temporary “Millionaire’...
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Tax Expenditures Not a New Problem
Matt Yglesias prints a chart on federal tax expenditures, showing that they have grown in real terms from $526 billion in 1982 to $1.024 trillion in 2010. ThinkProgress describes this as a “proliferation” of tax expenditures, and Yglesias offers this:
Ever since ...
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Are Muni Bonds Really Underreported By $800 Billion? I Doubt It.
Yesterday, Citigroup released a report claiming that Federal Reserve is far underestimating the amount of municipal debt outstanding. The Fed reported (page 91) that there was $2.925 trillion in outstanding muni debt at the end of 2010. Citi believes that figure to be ...
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The Debt Limit and Uncertainty
Over the last couple of years, a common conservative talking point about federal policy changes has been that uncertainty is dangerous. When people don’t know what future government policies will look like, the risk inherent in business investment ...
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The Great Stagnation and Goofing Off
You’re probably familiar with Tyler Cowen’s discussion of the Great Stagnation (Reihan reviewed Tyler’s e-book on the matter here) but the short version is that technological advances in recent decades are not driving the ...
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Niall Ferguson on Inflation
I second all the critiques offered by Ramesh and by Matt Yglesias: Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek op-ed, alleging that we are experiencing secret double-digit inflation, is pretty bizarre. Prices for certain highly visible goods are rising rapidly; that does ...
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Why can’t Democrats demagogue Medicare?
Brian Beutler has a piece at Talking Points Memo, pondering why liberal activists are (so far) failing to foment national outrage of the Paul Ryan budget’s cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. He notes that Republicans benefited massively from ...
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After a long standoff, it looks highly likely that Wisconsin will enact a law that severely restricts the scope of collective bargaining and the ability of public-employee unions to collect dues. It’s now worth reflecting on how this ...
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ATR's Budget Plan, Round Two
Ryan Ellis has posted a response to my critiqueof his budget plan. I respond below, briefly.
Ellis says my “most substantial” objection to his plan is that he overstates savings on net interest. (Ellis holds 2011 net interest ...
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Responding to the Smarter Liberal Critiques of Simpson-Bowles
There’s been a lot of screaming from the Left about the “catfood commission,” but not every liberal objection to the report is stupid or shrill. Let’s take a look at the Left’s ...
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No, Sarah Palin Is Not Stealing the Dancing With the Stars Election
Gawker Media site Jezebel alleges that “Palin Conservatives Are Cheating The DWTS Voting System.” For the uninitiated, that’s ABC’s Dancing With the Stars; Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, is ...
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Yes, Virginia, There Is Such a Thing As a Tax Expenditure
Cato’s Michael Cannon takes issue with the concept of “tax expenditures,” a term referring to government revenues foregone due to credits and deductions in the tax code. For example, allowing a deduction for home mortgage interest ...
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Californian Direct Democracy Strikes Again
California didn’t legalize marijuana (yet), but the state’s voters behaved true to form in their handling of two other ballot measures yesterday. Which is to say, they passed Proposition 26,which will make it more difficult to ...
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My RealClearMarkets piece today favorably discusses a proposal to change the federal gasoline tax from an 18.4 cents per gallon specific excise to an 8.4% “ad valorem” tax. This reform would be revenue neutral in the first year but would cause the ...
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My RealClearMarkets column this week responds to Peter Orszag’s debut NYT column on the fiscal gap. I agree with Orszag’s view that the gap-closing should be delayed and then done in one shot (though I’d wait three ...
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A Very Long Post on Cordoba House
I complained last week about conservatives urging bureaucrats in New York City to throw up roadblocks to the construction of a mosque at 51 Park Place in the name of “historic preservation.” Landmark preservation schemes like the one that ...
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One of the possible advantages that is touted for more generous UI (including by Mike Konczal) is the idea that it allows for better job matching—people can wait to find the right long-term job opportunity instead of taking ...
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How Much Do UI Extensions Matter for Unemployment?
James Pethokoukis of Reuters flags a blog post at the Atlanta Fed, highlighting Fed researchon how UI benefit extensions have affected the unemployment rate. TwoFed studies suggest that they may havecontributed0.4 to 1.7 percentage points to current unemployment. ...
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Last month, Bergen County Education Association officials sent out a memo that closed with a jokey prayer for New Jersey governor Chris Christie to die.
What raised the ire of the BCEA’s leaders? Christie’s proposal to ...
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What's Wrong with Film Subsidies
Over at RealClearMarkets, I write today on one area where states are not cutting back: subsidies for filmmakers. While states raise taxes and cut programs that people actually use (like health care and education) they are maintaining or even growing ...
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Christie Taking On Garden State Spending
New Jersey is America’s taxing and spending leader: the Tax Foundation estimates that New Jersey residents spend 11.8 percent of their incomes on state and local taxes, more than any other state and 2.1 percentage points above the national average. Part ...
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Alcohol Taxes Are Strongly Regressive
Today, Matt Yglesias examines the issue of using alcohol taxes to modify behavior, influenced by some of Reihan’s tweets. In addition to suggesting that higher alcohol taxes could improve social outcomes, Matt reaches a surprising conclusion about progressivity:
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I’d like to thank Reihan for inviting me to contribute here at The Agenda. As it happens, I am currently attending the Kauffman Foundation’s second-annual Economic Bloggers Forum, even though I am not ordinarily a blogger. (...