Brad DeLong has a set of ruminations on the economic situation that we now face, the gist of which is that we better be cautious in using fiscal policy because “we” are worried that the bankers may sink themselves again if interest rates rise back to more normal levels. Let’s look at the argument starting with [...]

Sorry, I misread the piece. It was the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that he wants to abolish. It would be the same thing — destroying large amounts of wealth, just different people involved. In the case of Peter Peterson and Bill Gates, we would be destroying the wealth of two very rich people. In the case [...]

Brad Plummer shows us two charts from a new publication from the International Labor Organization (ILO) that purport to tell us we face a tradeoff between job quality and jobs. The charts, one for wealthy countries and one for developing countries, seem to show that countries that had a deterioration in job quality saw the most job [...]

The Washington Post long ago eliminated any distinction between news and opinion in its reporting on Social Security and Medicare. Keeping with this pattern, it ran a front page editorial that gave us the bad news from the Medicare and Social Security trustees reports released yesterday. “And on Friday, analysts worried that the sunnier projections, together [...]

Okay boys and girls, is California’s projected budget surplus of $4.4 billion bigger or smaller than Connecticut’s projected surplus of $150 million or Wisconsin’s projected surplus of $2.1 billion? I don’t mean in absolute size, I mean in importance for the states. Offhand, I couldn’t tell you, since I don’t know the size of their economies [...]

In the wake of the new CBO numbers showing projecting that the debt-to-GDP ratio is actually projected to fall over the next decade, the Washington Post decided to give us one of its classic deficit/debt fear-mongering stories . The piece could avoid noting the obvious fact that there is nothing that could remotely pass as a deficit crisis [...]

Showing the sort of creativity that we have come to expect from economists, Tyler Cowen used his NYT column today to call for giving more money to the pharmaceutical industry as a way to deal with the risks of pandemics. Cowen moves from the true statement that research and development into prescription drugs and public health more [...]

Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, used their second NYT column in a week, to complain about how they are being treated. Their complaint deserves tears from crocodiles everywhere. They try to present themselves as ivory tower economists who cannot possibly be blamed for the ways in which their work has been used to justify public policy, specifically as [...]

I have a policy of not discussing items that directly refer to me in this blog, but I will make an exception today because the issues raised by Robert Samuelson are important. In his column Samuelson makes two key arguments. First, that the Reinhart-Rogoff conclusions about high debt leading to slow growth still stand even after [...]

The NYT appears to be following the pattern of journalism practiced by the Washington Post in openly editorializing in its news section. Today the news section features a diatribe against the Danish welfare state that is headlined, “Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault.” There’s not much ambiguity in that one. The piece then [...]

The New York Times ran a front page piece warning readers that the cost of treating dementia are “soaring.” The piece tells readers of the findings of a new study by the Rand Corporation that shows the cost of dementia doubling by 2040 from its 2010 level. Are you scared? Are you shaking in your boots? Thinking [...]

The New York Times ran a piece with a headline complaining “public misconception of government benefits makes trimming them harder.” The piece goes on to explain that the cost of the Medicare benefits received by a typical beneficiary vastly exceeds the taxes they will have paid into the system using standard discount rates. The piece tells readers [...]

Nope, I’m not kidding. In his column today, Hiatt complained that no one seems to be moving forward on his deficit reduction agenda. He then told readers: “What could shake them out of their own devices? One possibility, a fiscal hawk in the Obama administration told me almost wistfully, would be a ‘minor market event.’ A [...]

Okay, that’s not exactly what Robert Samuelson said, but pretty close. He actually told readers :

What frustrates constructive debate is muddled public opinion.

I just thought I would make a small change in the interest of accuracy. Samuelson is very upset because almost no one, Democrat, Republican, or independent wants to go along with his crusade to [...]

Steve Rattner wants someone to stop stealing from our kids according to the headline of his blogpost in the NYT. The finger should be pointed backwards in Rattner’s case because if anyone is going to jeopardize the living standards of our kids it is wealthy people like Mr. Rattner . We have seen an enormous upward redistribution of income over [...]

That’s what President Obama’s aides keep saying. They generally don’t put in those terms, probably because they assume that everyone already knows, but the cut to the typical senior’s Social Security benefit from the adoption of the chained CPI would be a larger hit to their income in retirement than the increase in income taxes put [...]

Joe Scarborough is apparently feeling emboldened by his exchange with Paul Krugman on the Charlie Rose show and is doubling down on his confused anti-deficit tirades. He is back with an oped in the Post, co-authored with Jeffrey Sachs, who should know better. The piece is a cornucopia of confusion, beginning with the first sentence:

Dick Cheney and Paul [...]

The most striking feature of the U.S. economy over the last three decades has been the upward redistribution of income. The top 1.0 percent of households has managed to pocket the vast majority of gains over this period. That is a sharp contrast with the three decades immediately following World War II when the benefits of [...]

Actually he neglected to mention this fact in his column this morning. (It’s less than 1.0 percent of GDP and only about 0.5 percent of GDP if we net out the interest rebated by the Fed.) Samuelson tells us:

The true national debt could be triple the conventional estimate, anywhere from $11 trillion to $31 trillion by [...]