October 2011
1 post
Hiatus
Hi guys, this are going well on my end. Hopefully you’ve been reading my pieces in the Monkeycage, if not you should (here’s my latest)!
As of now, I have am starting a new (hopefully semi permanent) gig that doesn’t allow their employees to blog their views. His means that, for now, Midwest Progress has to come to a halt. Not sure when it will be back, but thank you for...
September 2011
3 posts
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Milton Friedman: Increase the Money Supply
Direct quote, from a 1997 Wall Street Journal piece archived at Hoover. I couldn’t make this up.
Reviving Japan
by Milton Friedman
Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Milton Friedman gives the Bank of Japan step-by-step instructions for resuscitating the Japanese economy. A monetary kiss of life.
A decade of inept monetary policy by the Bank of Japan deserves much of the blame for the...
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Other Blogging Activities
Hi readers! As you all may know a month or two ago I announced that I would be writing a couple of columns a month for a website called The Politicizer. This has been an awesome opportunity and a few other columns are in the work (around my already busy school and research schedule). I have stumbled upon another blogging related opportunity that was too good to pass up.
John Sides over at The...
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Debunking the Uncertainty Myth
From Gary Burtless of Brookings (via Mark Thoma)
If managers thought taxes or regulatory costs might go up in the future, wouldn’t it make sense to take advantage of today’s low taxes and lower burdens to invest and hire today? According to the “uncertainty” argument, businesses are fearful they might face high taxes and extra health costs in 2016 or 2018. ...
August 2011
8 posts
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What Conservative Academic Economists Really Think...
Conservatives tout studies by two academic labor economists William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board and David Neumark of the University of California-Irvine to counter liberal claims by liberal activists and left leaning academic economists that the minimum wage does not cause diemployment effects (as neoclassical economic theory would suggest it does).
That is exactly what happened in the...
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Obama Makes My Case for Alan Krueger!
Today, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Obama is going to nominate Alan Krueger, former Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department and famed labor economist (in the Department at Princeton) to chair the Council of Economic Advisors.
Some diligent readers may remember that back in October I wrote a post entitled: The Case for Alan Krueger. Though I was...
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Who's the Gentrifier?
Some people might argue that’s because Wells is a gentrifier, tapping reservoirs of wealth to magically alleviate previously intractable problems. But that’s not the case. She’s actually lived in the District since 1983, and had been on the Hill for 20 years before taking on the Cluster School. She may share a skin color with a lot of D.C.’s gentrifiers, but her federal-government CV...
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The Sad Truth
Mike Konczal: Preach, preach!
I imagine that every day Kocherlakota interviews people – from banking, from the top 1%, from the corporate offices of our largest firms – who will kindly explain to him that the problem in the economy is that they just don’t get their demands answered quickly enough. If only they paid even less in taxes, if only regulations were weakened further, if only...
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Politicizer Column #2: How the Democrats Should...
Linked to here:
ROBINSON: How the Democrats Should Frame Their Tax-Increase Argument
Posted on August 10, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Filed under Articles by Writer, Economy, Issues, Jonathan Robinson no comments
Jonathan Robinson, Columnist
The debt deal that was forged between in Washington last week included the creation of a super committee meant to make the harsh decisions of austerity in the...
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Who Will Sit on the Joint Deficit Super Committee?
Alot of people in Washington are planning to put a lot of power and decision making authority into the Joint Super Committee to make cuts that will receive a up or down vote in Congress. Suzy Khimm over at Ezra Klein’s blog, asks the logical question (after the all too excellent and obligatory, will this commission work post by Sarah Binder over at the Monkeycage): who will be on this...
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My First Politicizer Column: The Battle Over Rules...
I have started a new gig posting a column 2-3 times a month at The Politicizer, an online opinion website for the “Millennial Generation”, whatever that is. The url is: http://www.thepoliticizer.com.
Here it is, my first column:
ROBINSON: The Battle Over Rules and Discretion Posted on August 2, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Filed under Economy, Government, Jonathan Robinson no comments
...
July 2011
2 posts
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The Economist is Wrong on Food Deserts
One of great parts of the journalism today is how easy it is contact and publicly fact check the claims made in articles and reports appearing in the news media. There is one publication that refuses to publish the authors of specific pieces written in their magazine and that is The Economist. If you don’t like a piece, the best you can do is hold the publication, rather than the writer...
Minimum Wage Research Post #3: Creating Metrics
One of the cool things that I get to do as a researcher is read, and read, and read some more. Part of the job of a researcher’s job (at least in my eyes) is to ask interesting questions that haven’t been answered or were insufficiently answered before. When you read other people’s work, you not only get the gist on what the consensus is on your topic and what current part of...
June 2011
4 posts
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Minimum Wage Research Post #2
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Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill on Tax Spat
The latest stir up in the Senate these days revolves around taxes. For the uninitiated, anti tax advocate Grover Norquist has circulated what has been called on both sides as an ‘anti tax pledge’ (it’s actually called the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, but I will refer to it as the Norquist pledge) that he has asked Republicans to sign. The reason I say Republicans is because as...
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The Ideology of Health Care Professionals
This graph from Adam Bonica’s blog is just one of many that aims to show the ideological tendencies of the medical profession. This is important, because as Jacob Hacker has shown in his great book The Divided Welfare State on the history of health care reform (and pension reform) in the US, stresses the importance of the support of the medical industry and the lobbying and professional...
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How I Spend My Days
I wish!
May 2011
2 posts
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Minimum Wage Post #1: Public Opinion
This summer I am lucky enough to be able to stay in DC and work on some of my research, one of three “conference paper” worthy papers I plan to write by the end of the year. I even created a “semi-professional” Google-site that will serve as my academic research hub (see research agenda here). My project this summer is a sort of political economy of minimum wage...
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Will The Deficit Trigger Work?
One of the major parts of President Obama’s deficit reduction plan is an “automatic trigger”, that provides for action when discretion falls short. Stated simply, if the Obama plan doesn’t cut deficits, then automatic cuts in spending will occur to supplant the failure to reach the target set up by the plan. It’s a bold move, ultimately inserted into the legislation...
April 2011
7 posts
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Thinking About Income Inequality and Financial...
From the work of Frank Levy and Peter Temin, more reasons to think about inequality and financial crisis:
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Money In Politics
The Wall Street Journal has a pretty good piece today on the finance community’s backlash towards the Democrats and recent giving spree towards the Republicans. The article begins by saying that:
Managers of hedge funds—private investment partnerships that cater to institutions and wealthy people—are reacting to what some criticize as Mr. Obama’s populist attacks on Wall Street,...
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InterState vs Interstate Trade
Over at Modeled Behavior, Niklas Blanchard makes a provocative but intuitive statement:
The United States, as understood properly, is the largest free trade area in the world. That has been a huge comparative advantage for the US historically, and arguably the reason that we are at the top of the world economic pyramid today. Restricting the flow of capital makes us poorer by reducing...
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Economics As Science, Not Art
There has been some debate lately as to whether economics is a science or not. Though that question is still up for debate (and rightly so in many cases),I would like to submit economics an argument as what economics should be. As stated by former Senator Kit Bond in the 2000 nomination hearing for Alan Greenspan:
Some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have raised questions...
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Inequality, Obama, and the Deficit
Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. And that’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a two hundred thousand dollar tax cut that’s paid for by asking thirty three seniors to each...
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Politics, Shmolitics
In light of the positives of the budget deal last night, here’s a little bit of negativity to keep you going.
The question we have to ask is, why if you negotiated a budget deal late into the night over the past few weeks, you wouldn’t register a vote on it? If Boehner doesn’t want to put his neck out on the line by voting on this bill in the House, then will he want to...
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Mark Thoma Asks: Why are Democrats so Much Worse...
So, Mark Thomas has gotten in the habit of asking questions over at his blog, and providing a forum for readers to respond. I’ll post this response over on that blog shortly enough, but I figured I would respond here first.
His question is this:
Why are Democrats so Much Worse than Republicans at Playing the Political Game? More Importantly, How Can They Do Better?
In my mind there are...
March 2011
7 posts
6 tags
Dear Government,
Please don’t shut down. Papa needs his NSF grant money.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Robinson & the Midwest Progress team.
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Should We Change the Rules on Fed Independence?
Joseph Stiglitz, in his comments after IMF conference on re-examining the macro-economic playbook said had this to say about central bank independence:
In any meeting such as this, it’s worth noting what was not discussed, or only mentioned briefly. The fact that countries with central banks that were not independent performed so much better than some of those that were—partly because the...
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Entitlements in Perspective
From the CBPP’s President, Bob Greenstein:
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In Which I Talk About House Procedure
Early in February I was unsure about two things. In a post I wrote (incoherently…)on party cohesion that:
The question is, despite not having a majority and having an increasing minority, the Republican caucus is able to have a great deal of cohesion.
At the time I was speaking about the Senate and not the House, but recent happenings in the House have caused me to ponder my...
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Is Social Security on the Chopping Block?
Paul Krugman is worried that the Obama administration is going to push for cuts in Social Security:
I hope this is wrong, although I have no reason to believe otherwise.
The Hill article that alarms Krugman notes division on the Obama economic team on this issue:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Sperling’s deputy, Jason Furman —...
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Firing Bad Teachers
This graphic from the Chicago Trib:
There’s lots of talk about firing bad teachers, especially ‘tenured’ teachers who have seniority and are protected from firings. Ed reformers call this ‘last in, first out”.
Surely everyone can agree that firing a good teacher instead of a bad one is never the right decision. The question we have to ask is: When do teachers...
February 2011
11 posts
6 tags
The Inequality Achievement Gap
From Richard Kahlenberg:
15-year-old Americans in low poverty schools (those with less than 10 percent of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch) scored 551 on reading, higher than the overall average of any participating country. By contrast, students in schools with more than 75% of students from low-income families, scored 446 on average, second to last among the 34...
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Wisconsin and Jumpstarting State Policy Diffusion
I was lucky enough to get a response to my bleg on the origins of policy in the states from outside organizations in coordinating policy diffusion in state legislatures from Dr. Andrew Karch, the Arleen C. Carlson Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Karch sent along a few really interesting papers.
One is by George Washington Political...
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State Policy Diffusion Bleg
Though there is much work on policy diffusion in the states (Volden and Shipan 2008 for example) I haven’t come across much work about conferences of state legislatures coordinating policies across the country.
With the anti-union laws in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio (for example) all causing an uproar from progressive and pro-labor organizations in these states. It would be almost...
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Union Membership and State Budget Deficits
David Brooks is wrong. How many times do I have to say it? Wrong about what you might ask? Well besides everything, Brooks is wrong about public sector unions and their drain on state budgets, and he doesn’t’ even do the dirty work to figure it out.
Brooks opines:
States with public sector unions tend to run into fiscal crises. They tend to have workplaces where personnel decisions...
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What an Interesting Time to Study Policy Diffusion
and
I am sure this will be fodder for some very interesting research into how organizing and inspiration affect the diffusion of collective action.
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The Worst
From Paul Krugman
Where is the uptick? Where is the stimulus? It got eaten up by 50 Herbert Hoovers, that’s what. Blame our budget deficits on entitlements, not on fiscal stimulus to put money back into the economy. When States undergo contractionary fiscal policy, it is the federal government’s priority to conduct expansionary policy. This is path dependency at its worst. We were...
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Don't Even: Lamar Alexander Edition
“This is the way the Senate ought to work,” said Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the third-ranking Republican. “An important bill got to the floor. It is getting a whole variety of amendments on everything from the Davis-Bacon Act to health care. We will end up passing a bill and take a step that we should have taken some time ago.
“Truth is, it is not taking any longer than it used...
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Unshared Prosperity and Consequences
When e-pundits banter about income inequality, there is usually a tension between two of the strong arguments in the academic literature on the topic. One explanation tends to come from economics and the other from political science.
The economics literature is getting on to the political science literature’s argument, but there is still a great deal of disagreement amongst scholars as...
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Inequality and Instability
Ken Rogoff remarks on the economic inequality that exists in current unstable Middle Eastern and North African regimes:
As the dramatic events in North Africa continue to unfold, many observers outside the Arab world smugly tell themselves that it is all about corruption and political repression. But high unemployment, glaring inequality, and soaring prices for basic commodities are also a...
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Economic Inequality: Illustrated
Then:
Now:
Courtesy of EPI
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When Your Policy Is Bad, You Better Be Good At...
The vote was 47 to 51, with all Republicans voting unanimously for repeal but falling 13 votes short of the 60 needed to advance their proposal.
Okay, nothing new here. But here comes the doozy…
Lawmakers in both parties joined forces, however, to repeal a tax provision in the health care law that would impose a huge information-reporting requirement on small businesses. That vote...
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Does Merit Pay Work for Teachers?
It wouldn’t seem so, regarding this bit of news on the merit based payments from the DC Public Schools IMPACT system that pays teachers for meeting a certain number of benchmarks (value added, they teach high need subject area, etc…), but by doing so they lose exemption from excessing. I outsource to Bill Turque (grudgingly)
According to DCPS figures, first reported by ...
January 2011
10 posts
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The Main Reason Our Economic Policy Has Become So...
Wouldn’t you like to know? More underneath the fold.
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Charlie Louvin, RIP
Charlie Louvin was a great. He will be missed.
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A Quick Primer on How To Block Changes to the...
With the 47 Republicans united in opposing any changes to filibuster rules, Udall, Merkley and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), their most senior supporter, remained far short of the votes needed to nullify the rule known formally as “cloture,” requiring 60 senators to vote yes to end debate so a final vote can be held. Many senior Democrats, who have watched the majority flip back and ...
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RE: Monetary Fiction; Literally
Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and Paul Krugman all want some good economic based fiction to read. As a gift to these fine bloggers I give them three such novels:
1. Super Sad Love Story - Gary Shteyngart
From Salon:
Lenny and Eunice’s rickety affair unfolds in a New York City smartening itself up for a visit from China’s central banker, “unofficially the world’s most...