Paul Krugman's Blog, page 617
August 5, 2009
All in all, you're just another brick in the Great Wall
I have a vision of a huge march down Constitution Avenue, with the marchers bearing banners that read "Forcefully support the Bureau of Economic Analysis in its heroic estimation efforts."
August 4, 2009
A moveable mob?
Are the same protesters showing up multiple health care town halls?
Shape of planet blogging
It seems that a fact isn't worth reporting unless someone is willing to deny it.
Hey, Mister Postman
Why has the Post Office become a byword for "something bad"?
Big business America
Interesting paper from CEPR:
Despite our national self-image as a nation of small businesses and entrepreneurs, the United States small-business sector is proportionately not as large an employer as the small-business sectors in the rest of the world's rich economies.
A couple of possible explanations. One is our lack of national health insurance; I personally know a [...:]
Despite our national self-image as a nation of small businesses and entrepreneurs, the United States small-business sector is proportionately not as large an employer as the small-business sectors in the rest of the world's rich economies.
A couple of possible explanations. One is our lack of national health insurance; I personally know a [...:]
Insurers only pull your coverage when it hurts
Via Yves Smith, an important piece on "rescissions": cases in which insurance companies retroactively cancel your health coverage.
The industry would have you believe that it's a minor issue, because only a small fraction of the insured experience rescissions in any given year. But as the post points out, a small fraction of the insured [...:]
The industry would have you believe that it's a minor issue, because only a small fraction of the insured experience rescissions in any given year. But as the post points out, a small fraction of the insured [...:]
Spending versus tax cuts
Jeff Frankel says what I wanted to say about what we know so far about the impact of the stimulus:
Martin Feldstein and others predicted that the tax-cut component of the 2009 fiscal stimulus package would have substantially less expansionary bang-for-the-buck than the spending component of the package, because much of the tax cut would be [...:]
Martin Feldstein and others predicted that the tax-cut component of the 2009 fiscal stimulus package would have substantially less expansionary bang-for-the-buck than the spending component of the package, because much of the tax cut would be [...:]
August 3, 2009
Black states
A slight followup on my last post. The BLS conveniently provides a map of state unemployment rates across the country, which is worth looking at:
What you see, if you look at the black states - states with 10+ percent unemployment - are two great belts of suffering. One is California/Oregon/Nevada, which is about the [...:]
What you see, if you look at the black states - states with 10+ percent unemployment - are two great belts of suffering. One is California/Oregon/Nevada, which is about the [...:]
Texas is not the only red state
There has been quite a lot of commentary on my colleague Ross Douthat's use of a Texas-California comparison to claim that red states are doing better in the crisis than blue states. Some have pointed out that California, despite its liberal reputation, doesn't have especially high taxes; others have pointed out that Texas, where almost [...:]
A senior moment on Medicare
Right now the GOP's most effective attack on health reform seems to be the claim that Obama is going to ration health care to seniors; we even have legislation to prevent Medicare from taking research on the effectiveness of treatment into account in deciding what to pay for.
A number of people have pointed out that [...:]
A number of people have pointed out that [...:]
