If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
A peculiar form of American isolationism has gripped our country. The rest of the world is fending off potentially disastrous immediate economic contagion, while we expend much of our national energy on social issues pretty much decided years ago.
Yet properly governed, corporations can be run for the 99 percent. In fact, that's still the case in many successful economies. The truth is that it's possible to take back the corporations for the 99 percent in the U.S. if we can really wrap our heads around the problem and the solutions.
I've pretty much stopped exhorting policy makers to engage in deficit-financed fiscal stimulus, not because we no longer need it -- we do -- but because it feels like a waste of time. With the fading of the Recovery Act along with state and local budget cuts, U.S. fiscal policy has turned contractionary. Yes, the economy is getting better, and pretty consistently at that. But it's still a slog, and gas prices are pushing the other way, among other factors. So I'm going to briefly drag the idea of stimulus out of hiding for two reasons. First, there's been a spate of research on the bang from fiscal stimulus in certain situations. And second, because Europe is providing such a sad, natural experiment of this forgotten thesis.
April Fools' Day is a day for light-hearted hijinks without real consequences. Embracing foolishness as public policy is a far different notion altogether. The Cuba embargo is one of several fixtures in American politics that requires a suspension of disbelief.
Failing states are failing states. The difference between over there and over here, however, is that we have been stacking the deck against ourselves.
Organized gambling is a scam. And it particularly preys upon people with lower incomes -- who assume they can't make it big any other way, who often find it hardest to assess the odds, and whose families can least afford to lose the money. Yet America is now opening the floodgates.
While the backlash is inevitable, it raises a key question: How much control does the president really have over oil and gasoline prices? How people perceive the answer to that question could well decide the results of the next election.
Nearly three in four Americans report having frozen or cut back their use of credit cards in recent times. But of the more than one in four who are spending more on their cards these days, more than half report using their credit cards to help cover basic needs.
It would be truly unfortunate if twenty years from now we woke up to the realization that U.S. prominence in the world's economy had dropped even farther from where it stood today, because we made the mistake of shortchanging our educational systems.
U.S. trade policy needs to be based on what is good for the U.S. economy and U.S. job growth. And Congress needs to recognize that in an ever more globalized world, using trade as a political instrument to fight yesterday's wars is at best self defeating.
With the economy just barely on a path to durable recovery, some very dumb fiscal chickens are coming home to roost on January 1 of next year. This grim coincidence is known as the Triple Witching Hour.
Whether regulation is hampering business and stymieing job creation is just as important as whether the public interest is being served and what would be lost if the regulations were rolled back or pruned.
The economy grew at a 3 percent annual rate last quarter. Personal income also jumped. Americans raked in over $13 trillion. Yet it's almost a certainty that all the gains went to the top 10 percent, and the lion's share to the top 1 percent.
"The myth of the disappearing middle class" is a canard. Indeed, most living standards analysts think of the middle class as some chunk in the middle of the income distribution -- say the middle fifth or some variation therein -- which of course cannot by definition "disappear." I've been writing about middle class economics for decades and not once did I or my colleagues argue "disappearance." However, we did, and do, argue that the wage and income growth of middle class workers and families has weakened over time -- that the middle class has become increasingly squeezed. To understand the middle class squeeze, you've got to look at wages and hours.
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the top 1% (of banks) was a danger to the other 99% (of banks), to our economy, our liberty and our democratic values. I expected to hear this at Zuccotti Park. It was a genuine surprise to hear it on 5th Avenue.
Is it possible to measure the happiness of the world's population? Remarkably it is, and the first World Happiness Report published today does just that.
