The Keynesian Stimulus Spending Fallacy
It’s a truism of pop Keynesian economics that consumer spending drives the economy; if spending slows in a recession, government must make up the difference. In reality, consumer spending merely...
View ArticleIs Paul Krugman’s Liquidity Trap Really an Inequality Trap?
As I watched Paul Krugman Sunday night on Bill Moyers, I felt a familiar sense of despair. Krugman cares deeply about unemployment and inequality, as did John Maynard Keynes before him. Yet like...
View ArticleRaise the Minimum Wage or Cut Low-Wage Taxes?
My son is a low-wage worker, a short-order cook. President Obama just called for an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. Yet he made no effort to save the “temporary...
View ArticleJoseph Stiglitz Is Right About Inequality, but for the Wrong Reason
Joseph Stiglitz says that “Inequality is Holding Back the Recovery”. He’s right, but he gives the wrong reason, that “our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically...
View ArticleThe Monopolists in My Back Yard
When Con Ed dug up West 72nd Street last year to lay new natural gas lines, I thought great, now the apartment buildings on my block can switch their boilers to gas and stop letting off those black...
View ArticleGrover Norquist is Right to Oppose Internet Sales Taxes
When I visited my brother in London a few years back, I toted a suitcase packed with tennis balls. I paid New York City’s 8 ½ % sales tax to help my brother’s tennis-mad family avoid the UK’s 20%...
View ArticlePolly Cleveland: It Takes Government to Create Markets
When the US Army blasted into Baghdad in 2003, expelling Saddam’s Baathist regime, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expected “free markets” to pop up all over. Instead, he got looting, murder, and...
View ArticleThe Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Microeconomics, by...
It was the perfect “natural experiment:” in April 1992, New Jersey’s minimum-wage was scheduled to rise from $4.25 an hour to $5.05, while neighboring Pennsylvania’s minimum wage remained unchanged....
View ArticleHow a Progressive Tax System Made Detroit a Powerhouse (and Could Again)
In 1995, we encountered a group of economic advisors to Governor John Engler of Michigan, intent on cutting property taxes. We reminded them of California’s 1979 Proposition 13. After Prop. 13 rolled...
View ArticleCongressman Bill Foster Explains Why Middle Class Tax Cuts Lead to Economic...
[Bill Foster (IL-11) says it better than I could myself—Polly] Washington, DC, Friday, April 4, 2014 – Today, Congressman Bill Foster (IL-11) spoke on the House floor against H.R. 1874, which would...
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