Reconciliation: How the Democrats Can Run the Table
Congressional Democrats will take office in January with the broadest mandate since the post-Watergate midterms in 1974—twice the popular-vote margin the Contract-with-America Republicans won in 1994. The work begins with dismantling most of what Donald Trump and his corrupt, incompetent administration have done over the past two years. Much of what Trump wrought came through his One Big Beautiful (sic)… Continue reading
Trump’s Tax Plan is Aimed at the 2018 and 2020…
President Trump wants to cut the tax rate for all American businesses to 15 percent, and damn the deficit. If you believe him, any damage from higher deficits will be minor compared to the benefits for US competitiveness, economic efficiency, and tax fairness. The truth is, those claims are nonsense; and the real agenda here is the 2018 and 2020…Continue reading
Donald Trump and Paul Ryan’s Plan to Put Foreign Investors…
The “Border Adjustment Tax” (BAT) endorsed recently by President Trump is his administration’s first foray into international economics. It is an inauspicious start. BAT advocates like House Speaker Paul Ryan promise it will cut the trade deficit by making U.S. exports cheaper abroad and foreign imports more expensive here. The truth is, a BAT won’t much affect U.S. exports or…Continue reading
The Case for Guaranteed Access to Prescription Drugs
Everyone complains about the prices of prescription drugs. Yet, 60 percent of us use them, because they help relieve our pain, improve the quality of our lives, and extend our lifespans. The older we are, the more prescription drugs we consume — and not only because older people usually have more healthcare issues. Equally important, older Americans have guaranteed access…Continue reading
Republican Presidents and Inequality
The new findings on growing inequality by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman are deeply disturbing. They demonstrate again how extreme overall inequality has become in America. The top 1 percent’s share of all pretax income went from 10.7 percent in 1980 to a little over 20.2 percent in 2014, while the share claimed by the bottom 50 percent…Continue reading
What Hillary’s Campaign Missed
Last week’s election should be dubbed the revenge of the neglected. The outcome would have been different if Hillary’s strategists had taken to heart James Carville’s famous quip in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I remember it well, because I pulled together Bill Clinton’s economic program for the 1992 campaign. Of course, today’s economic problems are different from those of…Continue reading
Halloween Special: How Hillary Can Handle Scary Interest Rate Hikes
Looking past this weekend’s kerfuffle over Huma Abedin’s emails, Hillary Clinton’s success in her first term as President will depend in large part on whether the incomes of most Americans keep rising. As readers of this blog know, my studies tracking people’s incomes, year to year as they aged, found that the median household incomes of millennials, Gen Xers and boomers…Continue reading
Obama’s Expansion Is Finally Paying Off
There’s no debate that the tough economic times of the last decade have helped frame the 2016 elections. In fact, many Americans are so accustomed to seeing the world through their experience of tough times, that it’s hard to recognize when conditions have changed. Yet, here’s one sign that times are different: American businesses have created almost 9.2 million net…Continue reading
On Economic Growth, Hillary Delivers and Trump Pretends
To prepare for tonight’s debate, I decided to think through Donald Trump’s promise to deliver 4% annual economic growth. First off, if this is Trump’s goal, then his program is as much a fraud as his foundation or university. If anything, his proposals would slow our already modest growth. To be sure, no one has a silver bullet to raise the…Continue reading