We have seen the argument from some commission participants (Peterson for one) that Social Security is too expensive for those who need it and pay for it because it is an ‘entitlement’. We also have read from some Congress members (Senators Kyl and McConnel) that tax cut extensions of the Bush presidency are not deficit producing and need not be part of pay go.
We have seen the argument from some commission participants (Peterson for one) that Social Security is too expensive for those who need it and pay for it because it is an ‘entitlement’. We also have read from some Congress members (Senators Kyl and McConnel) that tax cut extensions of the Bush presidency are not deficit producing and need not be part of pay go. The Fiscal Times has an article on considerations being undertaken by the Commission for Deficit Reduction
The WSJ and the Commerce Department realize what everyone else already knew . The recession was deeper — and subsequent recovery slower — than the government originally estimated, the Commerce Department said Friday.
Robert Waldmann I thought the only thing she knew was that she is a libertarian. Now I realize she doesn’t even know what the word “libertarian” means.
Hat tip Calculated Risk for the Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi paper How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End .
Michael Boskin writes that double dip downturns are more the rule than the exception. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/boskin10/English I find this to be a very misleading article. What he is writing about is what happens in an actual recession when sometimes real GDP does bounce up for one quarter before resuming its fall.
This recession caused a severe disruption in the labor market for teen employment. The chart below illustrates the unemployment rate alongside the employment-to-population ratio for those aged 16-19 years. The visual is quite striking: at the peak of the business cycle, December 2007, the difference between the employment-to-population ratio over the unemployment rate was roughly 17.3 percentage points ( pps ).
Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman consider the increase in the number of job vacancies to be bad news — to be a sign that long term unemployment has made it hard to increase employment even if there are vacant jobs. The high vacancies are held to be a sign of a problem which is more persistent and less absurdly easy to deal with than low aggregate demand. I comment after the jump One might imagine that high unemployment and high vacancy rates are, as you directly state, a bad sign as high unemployment combined with high vacancies lasts longer — that the combination is a sign of hysteresis from a) deteriorated jobs skills, or b)deteriorated work habits, or c) irrational stigma due to employers assuming a or be or d) missmatch