The Last of the Baby Boomers Are Turning 65, And…
Between now and 2030, nearly 30 million Americans born between 1959 and 1964 will turn 65, the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. As the largest cohort on record to reach retirement age, they are often called the “peak boomers.” In a new study supported by the Alliance for Lifetime Income, my co-author Luke Stuttgen and I found that… Continue reading
Why Don’t Americans Recognize that Inflation is Down and Incomes…
My late boss, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sage and successful politician, once told me that in politics, “If you don’t get credit, it didn’t happen.” The White House and congressional Democrats need to relearn that lesson. In March 2022, 75 percent of Americans thought the economy was flailing despite more than a year of historic gains in GDP and…Continue reading
The Debt Ceiling, Austerity, and the Economic Challenges Haunting President…
The latest reports on real growth and personal incomes issued last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) include equally cautionary news for the economy and President Biden's prospects in 2024. Employment, incomes, and consumer spending all remain strong despite sharply higher interest rates. But the economy is balanced on a knife’s edge because businesses have been cutting back…Continue reading
The Senate Is Even More Anti-Democratic Than You Think
Donald Trump’s efforts to dominate American democracy may seem sui generis. Certainly, no other president has dismissed the results of a national election he lost, rallied supporters to violently prevent Congress from certifying that loss and called for ignoring the Constitution to facilitate his return to power. But Americans have long struggled with the country’s foundational anti-democratic features—fighting a civil…Continue reading
What Really Happened to Silicon Valley Bank
If you thought Big Finance and its regulators learned prudence and humility from the financial crisis, the past week's events were a rude wake-up call. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has several subplots. The most obvious was its astonishingly stupid investment strategy of concentrating its assets in instruments whose market value would decline as interest rates rose. .…Continue reading
Inflation Reality Check: Don‘t Blame Wages and Salaries
Yes, economics can be complicated, and economic reporters work under tight deadlines. That’s no excuse for the media meme that blames rising wages for much of today’s inflation. The Wall Street Journal summed up this erroneous view in a recent headline, “Rapid Wage Growth Keeps Pressure on inflation.” The Journal’s self-serving take is refuted by the data and rejected by…Continue reading
The Decline and Possible Resurrection of Radical Gerrymandering
Given Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election, it’s unsurprising that a recent survey by the National Opinion Research Center found that 52 percent of Americans believe that our democracy is in serious trouble. Their skepticism includes congressional gerrymandering—when the party controlling the state legislature draws the state’s congressional and state legislative districts in ways that give them…Continue reading
The Economy Is Doing Fine, for the Time Being
Republican charges of a “Biden recession” during the midterm campaign failed to ignite a red wave, and the latest release of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) explains why. In the third quarter, the economy grew 2.9 percent after inflation. That strong growth is revised from the BEA’s 2.6 percent estimate released just before the midterm election, and…Continue reading
C’mon, Democrats, Tout Your Economic Record: It’s a Very Good…
Drawing on the fact-free politics of Donald Trump, Republicans are selling the meme that Americans are much worse off economically and financially under President Joe Biden and the Democrats. That is demonstrably untrue. Yet, the Democrats’ main response has been to mumble an apology for the inflation they didn’t cause and try and change the subject. That approach won’t work,…Continue reading