"The key thing to remember, and what the GOP hopes you won't understand, is that raising the debt ceiling only empowers the president to spend money that he's authorized to spend by Congressional legislation; nothing more. Conversely, a party that refuses to raise the debt limit is saying that it's prepared to inflict vast damage [...]
Tag: economics
Poets and Robots
"Ah, you ask, but what about the people? Very good question. Smart machines may make higher GDP possible, but also reduce the demand for people, including smart people. So we could be looking at a society that grows ever richer, but in which all the gains in wealth accrue to whoever owns the robots. "And [...]
PROOF! Republicans are WRONG!
Cutting taxes on rich people doesn't help the economy, it only helps rich people. As if you needed proof, but if you like proof, well, here it is: Congressional Research Service Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 (pdf) Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance September 14, [...]
Dr. Krugman on the 47%
And he has a nice chart, too. "Thanks to the child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, a fair number of working families with young children pay no income tax; thanks to the exemption on Social Security, many older Americans pay no income tax. But in middle age, close to 80 percent of the [...]
MSM: lying or just lazy, all the same stuff
"Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for." Unethical Commentary, [...]
Hooray for Procter & Gamble
"'We believe it is in the best interest of California, our company, and our consumers for the state to maintain fair and competitive tax policies for all businesses operating in the state,' wrote Patrick L. Hayes, Procter & Gamble's associate director for state government relations. "We are not involved in any formal opposition to Proposition [...]
41% of Professional women are not having kids because she who travels fastest, travels alone
And the patriarchy runs our society sucks. "First off, 41% of professional women these days are choosing not to have children, and unlike ten years ago, they're comfortable with their decisions on this front. In the straitened circumstances of a high unemployment, low growth economy, many women believe that it's wiser to do two things [...]
Smoking in California
"If the ballot initiative won, the sponsoring American Cancer Society estimated, 220,000 kids would never start smoking and 100,000 adults would quit rather than pay the extra $1 per pack to fund research on tobacco-related diseases. That would cut deeply into tobacco's profits." Higher tobacco tax? It's still a no-brainer, by George Skelton, Capitol Journal, [...]
Leave it to the BBC
To give us historical perspective and quote Monty Python. And, yes, you have to click the link and read the thing to see the Python quote. Geeze, do I have file your taxes, too? I'm just quoting the cerebral part by my man Ed Gibbon here. "Edward Gibbon, in his great book Decline and Fall, [...]
This is why Wall Street is doomed
And maybe the whole stupid economy as we know it. "Just to play a concise version of the parlor game that went around the stock markets, Facebook's market value at $104bn, with $3.7bn of profits, would have made Facebook worth more than: internet megastore Amazon.com; global beverage behemoth PepsiCo; petro-giant Total; BHP Billiton; and McDonald's. [...]