With the presentation of his 2020 budget, Donald Trump has been getting a ton of grief over the large current and projected future budget deficits. While his budget shows the deficit coming down, this is due to large cuts to programs that middle income and lower income people depend upon, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. His projections for falling deficits also depend on assuming a faster growth rate than just about anyone thinks is possible. So realistically, we are looking at a story of large deficits for the indefinite future.
While this is supposed to be really bad, people who pay attention to economic data may think otherwise. If we look at the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projections for the unemployment rates for 2018, 2019, and 2020, from 2017, before the tax cut was passed, they were respectively, 4.2 percent, 4.4 percent, and 4.7 percent. If we look at CBO’s latest projections for these three years, they are 3.9 percent (actual) 3.5 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively. The difference between the latest projections and the pre-tax cut projections imply a gain of more than 2 million in employment in each of these years.
These two million additional people being employed is a big deal not only for these workers and their families but for tens of millions of other workers who have more bargaining power as a result of a tighter labor market. And, we’re supposed to think this is a bad thing because of the deficit and debt? Tell the children of the people who are now working because of the larger deficit or whose parents have higher pay how the debt is a burden on them.
Of course, giving a big tax cut to corporations and rich people was just about the worst way imaginable to boost the economy. The promised investment boom is not happening. The boost is coming because rich people are spending a portion of their tax cuts and their increased share buybacks and dividends. But we could have also given the money to middle-income and lower-income people who would have been happy to spend it as well.
Even better, we could have used to money to promote clean energy, retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, and subsidizing mass transit. Our children have much more to fear from a wrecked environment than government debt.
In any case, the debt/deficit whiners should acknowledge the substantial economic gains from stimulating the economy with a larger deficit. It is a really big deal for a large number of people at the middle and bottom of the income distribution.
With the presentation of his 2020 budget, Donald Trump has been getting a ton of grief over the large current and projected future budget deficits. While his budget shows the deficit coming down, this is due to large cuts to programs that middle income and lower income people depend upon, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. His projections for falling deficits also depend on assuming a faster growth rate than just about anyone thinks is possible. So realistically, we are looking at a story of large deficits for the indefinite future.
While this is supposed to be really bad, people who pay attention to economic data may think otherwise. If we look at the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projections for the unemployment rates for 2018, 2019, and 2020, from 2017, before the tax cut was passed, they were respectively, 4.2 percent, 4.4 percent, and 4.7 percent. If we look at CBO’s latest projections for these three years, they are 3.9 percent (actual) 3.5 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively. The difference between the latest projections and the pre-tax cut projections imply a gain of more than 2 million in employment in each of these years.
These two million additional people being employed is a big deal not only for these workers and their families but for tens of millions of other workers who have more bargaining power as a result of a tighter labor market. And, we’re supposed to think this is a bad thing because of the deficit and debt? Tell the children of the people who are now working because of the larger deficit or whose parents have higher pay how the debt is a burden on them.
Of course, giving a big tax cut to corporations and rich people was just about the worst way imaginable to boost the economy. The promised investment boom is not happening. The boost is coming because rich people are spending a portion of their tax cuts and their increased share buybacks and dividends. But we could have also given the money to middle-income and lower-income people who would have been happy to spend it as well.
Even better, we could have used to money to promote clean energy, retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient, and subsidizing mass transit. Our children have much more to fear from a wrecked environment than government debt.
In any case, the debt/deficit whiners should acknowledge the substantial economic gains from stimulating the economy with a larger deficit. It is a really big deal for a large number of people at the middle and bottom of the income distribution.
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In the Soviet Union, for a long time, official publications (which were the only publications) were prohibited from mentioning Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the revolution, who subsequently fell out with Stalin and was forced into exile. I’m wondering if The New York Times has the same policy towards mentioning the trade deficit as a cause of economic weakness.
It’s hard to reach any other conclusion after seeing David Leonhardt’s piece on the recurring tendency of forecasters to be overly optimistic about economic growth. Leonhardt points to the persistent shortfall of demand as the major problem slowing growth. Following Larry Summers, he suggests policies that could boost investment and consumption.
While these are both good ways of increasing demand, so is a lower trade deficit. This is very basic economics. If the trade deficit were 1.0 percent of GDP rather than a bit more than 3.0 percent of GDP, it would provide the same boost to demand as a $400 billion annual stimulus package.
It’s sort of amazing that Leonhardt can leave such a basic and obvious point out of this discussion. Did the NYT’s commissars airbrush the trade deficit out of the article?
In the Soviet Union, for a long time, official publications (which were the only publications) were prohibited from mentioning Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the revolution, who subsequently fell out with Stalin and was forced into exile. I’m wondering if The New York Times has the same policy towards mentioning the trade deficit as a cause of economic weakness.
It’s hard to reach any other conclusion after seeing David Leonhardt’s piece on the recurring tendency of forecasters to be overly optimistic about economic growth. Leonhardt points to the persistent shortfall of demand as the major problem slowing growth. Following Larry Summers, he suggests policies that could boost investment and consumption.
While these are both good ways of increasing demand, so is a lower trade deficit. This is very basic economics. If the trade deficit were 1.0 percent of GDP rather than a bit more than 3.0 percent of GDP, it would provide the same boost to demand as a $400 billion annual stimulus package.
It’s sort of amazing that Leonhardt can leave such a basic and obvious point out of this discussion. Did the NYT’s commissars airbrush the trade deficit out of the article?
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That seems pretty much definitional, but many readers of this Washington Post piece, on what is in effect insider trading by top management, may miss this point. As CEO pay has exploded over the last four decades, from 20 to 30 times the pay of a typical worker to 200 or 300 times, many have discussed this rise as though it is somehow in collusion with shareholders.
That makes zero sense. The money that CEOs and top management pocket is money that otherwise could have gone to shareholders. Shareholders have no more interest in CEOs getting big paychecks than they do in seeing assembly line workers or retail clerks getting big paychecks. Contrary to the view that shareholders have been making out like bandits, stock market returns over the last two decades have actually been low by historical standards.
When it comes to reining in CEO pay, shareholders should be viewed as allies. This matters not just because CEOs don’t deserve such outrageous paychecks, but because bloated CEO pay affects pay scales throughout the economy. If this is hard to understand, ask a high-level university administrator near you how much they get paid.
That seems pretty much definitional, but many readers of this Washington Post piece, on what is in effect insider trading by top management, may miss this point. As CEO pay has exploded over the last four decades, from 20 to 30 times the pay of a typical worker to 200 or 300 times, many have discussed this rise as though it is somehow in collusion with shareholders.
That makes zero sense. The money that CEOs and top management pocket is money that otherwise could have gone to shareholders. Shareholders have no more interest in CEOs getting big paychecks than they do in seeing assembly line workers or retail clerks getting big paychecks. Contrary to the view that shareholders have been making out like bandits, stock market returns over the last two decades have actually been low by historical standards.
When it comes to reining in CEO pay, shareholders should be viewed as allies. This matters not just because CEOs don’t deserve such outrageous paychecks, but because bloated CEO pay affects pay scales throughout the economy. If this is hard to understand, ask a high-level university administrator near you how much they get paid.
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It is always fun, even if tiresome, to mock Donald Trump for getting things wrong. This is why the jump in the merchandise trade deficit last year to $891.2 billion was especially newsworthy.
Trump had made the trade deficit one of the central issues in his campaign and promised to reduce it to bring back good-paying jobs in manufacturing. He was going to use his skills as a negotiator to get better deals from our trading partners. For this reason, the fact that the deficit is going up, not down, is somewhat amusing. In this case, unlike the last decade, the rise in the trade deficit is associated with a modest increase in manufacturing employment rather than a crash, so the implications of the rise are not nearly as serious.
Nonetheless, it is worth getting the story straight. It is somewhat misleading to refer to the 2018 trade deficit as “record-breaking” as in this Washington Post headline. While the $891.2 billion deficit is considerably larger in nominal terms than the previous record of $838.3 billion, set in 2006, it is considerably smaller measured relative to the size of the economy.
The 2018 deficit is equal to 4.3 percent of GDP. The 2006 deficit was equal to 6.1 percent of GDP. If we are making historical comparisons, this is the more relevant figure, not the dollar amount.
It is always fun, even if tiresome, to mock Donald Trump for getting things wrong. This is why the jump in the merchandise trade deficit last year to $891.2 billion was especially newsworthy.
Trump had made the trade deficit one of the central issues in his campaign and promised to reduce it to bring back good-paying jobs in manufacturing. He was going to use his skills as a negotiator to get better deals from our trading partners. For this reason, the fact that the deficit is going up, not down, is somewhat amusing. In this case, unlike the last decade, the rise in the trade deficit is associated with a modest increase in manufacturing employment rather than a crash, so the implications of the rise are not nearly as serious.
Nonetheless, it is worth getting the story straight. It is somewhat misleading to refer to the 2018 trade deficit as “record-breaking” as in this Washington Post headline. While the $891.2 billion deficit is considerably larger in nominal terms than the previous record of $838.3 billion, set in 2006, it is considerably smaller measured relative to the size of the economy.
The 2018 deficit is equal to 4.3 percent of GDP. The 2006 deficit was equal to 6.1 percent of GDP. If we are making historical comparisons, this is the more relevant figure, not the dollar amount.
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David Brooks likes to present himself as a voice of reason in the midst of crazy ideologues of the left and the right. He gave us an example of his voice of reason routine today in a piece telling us that Medicare for All is an impossibility.
While the piece raises some reasonable points (the transition will be difficult) the highlight is a condemnation of the Canadian health care system, which is often held up as a model by supporters of Medicare for All.
“Finally, patient expectations would have to transition. Today, getting a doctor’s appointment is annoying but not onerous. In Canada, the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist is 8.7 weeks; between a G.P. referral and an orthopedic surgeon, it’s nine months. That would take some adjusting.”
While it is true that Canada has longer wait times than the United States for seeing a specialist, this is one area in which its health care system does especially poorly. In other areas, it does better than the United States. Also, other systems, which all cost far less per person than in the United States, do better in this and other categories, as shown in a recent analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
If Brooks wants to make the point that transitioning to a universal Medicare-type system will be difficult, he’s on solid ground. But to imply that we can’t do better requires ignoring a vast amount on evidence from other wealthy countries, all of whom do better in providing universal coverage at a lower per capita price than we pay for our far from universal coverage.
This is very far from a voice of reason in the health care debate.
David Brooks likes to present himself as a voice of reason in the midst of crazy ideologues of the left and the right. He gave us an example of his voice of reason routine today in a piece telling us that Medicare for All is an impossibility.
While the piece raises some reasonable points (the transition will be difficult) the highlight is a condemnation of the Canadian health care system, which is often held up as a model by supporters of Medicare for All.
“Finally, patient expectations would have to transition. Today, getting a doctor’s appointment is annoying but not onerous. In Canada, the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and a specialist is 8.7 weeks; between a G.P. referral and an orthopedic surgeon, it’s nine months. That would take some adjusting.”
While it is true that Canada has longer wait times than the United States for seeing a specialist, this is one area in which its health care system does especially poorly. In other areas, it does better than the United States. Also, other systems, which all cost far less per person than in the United States, do better in this and other categories, as shown in a recent analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
If Brooks wants to make the point that transitioning to a universal Medicare-type system will be difficult, he’s on solid ground. But to imply that we can’t do better requires ignoring a vast amount on evidence from other wealthy countries, all of whom do better in providing universal coverage at a lower per capita price than we pay for our far from universal coverage.
This is very far from a voice of reason in the health care debate.
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I had a longer piece on this Vox article, but our site ate it, so I will be very brief. This Vox piece on the financial transactions tax introduced by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz gets the story badly wrong.
The CBO revenue estimate does assume a substantial reduction in trading volume. It does not assume that trading volume remains unchanged, as the piece seems to imply.
Of course, the reduction in volume could be larger than CBO assumes, but this would not be a bad thing. In principle, we want the financial markets to operate using as few resources as possible, this means that they are more efficient. If we can operate the markets with half as many trades (like we did in the 1990s) and the markets just as effectively allocate capital, then the markets are more efficient, just as the trucking sector would be more efficient if we could deliver the same amounts of goods with half as many trucks and truckers.
From the standpoint of the individual investor the tax will mean a higher cost per trade, but they will do fewer trades, leaving their trading costs pretty much the same even with the tax. For example, if the tax raises cost by 30 percent, then they (or their fund manager) will reduce trading volume by roughly 30 percent.
In this way, the financial sector eats pretty much the whole cost of the tax. This is why it is so popular among economists.
I had a longer piece on this Vox article, but our site ate it, so I will be very brief. This Vox piece on the financial transactions tax introduced by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz gets the story badly wrong.
The CBO revenue estimate does assume a substantial reduction in trading volume. It does not assume that trading volume remains unchanged, as the piece seems to imply.
Of course, the reduction in volume could be larger than CBO assumes, but this would not be a bad thing. In principle, we want the financial markets to operate using as few resources as possible, this means that they are more efficient. If we can operate the markets with half as many trades (like we did in the 1990s) and the markets just as effectively allocate capital, then the markets are more efficient, just as the trucking sector would be more efficient if we could deliver the same amounts of goods with half as many trucks and truckers.
From the standpoint of the individual investor the tax will mean a higher cost per trade, but they will do fewer trades, leaving their trading costs pretty much the same even with the tax. For example, if the tax raises cost by 30 percent, then they (or their fund manager) will reduce trading volume by roughly 30 percent.
In this way, the financial sector eats pretty much the whole cost of the tax. This is why it is so popular among economists.
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That would have been worth mentioning in a New York Times piece on how the limits are hitting upper middle class and rich taxpayers in liberal states like New York and California. The tax law pushed through by Trump and the Republican Congress in 2017 was quite explicitly designed to make it more difficult for liberal states to raise revenue for purposes like providing health care and quality education.
It did this by limiting the amount of state and local tax that people could deduct from their federal taxes. While previously these taxes were fully deductible from federal taxes, which meant that the federal government was effectively picking up the tab on between 25 percent and 40 percent of state and local taxes, after the change the taxpayer has to pick up 100 percent, once the limit is reached.
However, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, put in place a partial workaround on this limit. He pushed a bill through the state’s legislature that partially replaces the state’s income tax with a voluntary payroll tax on employers of 5.0 percent. A payroll tax paid by employers is not subject to income taxes. (Economists usually assume that payroll taxes come out of wages.)
The law reduces a worker’s state income tax dollar for dollar for money paid in the payroll tax on their behalf. This move effectively preserves the deductibility of the state income tax, at least for people who get most of their income in wages.
Contrary to what is implied in the NYT piece, Cuomo’s workaround has not been ruled illegal. It is being phased in, so only 1.0 percent of income tax could be shielded in this way in 2018, but that rises to 3.0 percent this year, and 5.0 percent in 2020.
That would have been worth mentioning in a New York Times piece on how the limits are hitting upper middle class and rich taxpayers in liberal states like New York and California. The tax law pushed through by Trump and the Republican Congress in 2017 was quite explicitly designed to make it more difficult for liberal states to raise revenue for purposes like providing health care and quality education.
It did this by limiting the amount of state and local tax that people could deduct from their federal taxes. While previously these taxes were fully deductible from federal taxes, which meant that the federal government was effectively picking up the tab on between 25 percent and 40 percent of state and local taxes, after the change the taxpayer has to pick up 100 percent, once the limit is reached.
However, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, put in place a partial workaround on this limit. He pushed a bill through the state’s legislature that partially replaces the state’s income tax with a voluntary payroll tax on employers of 5.0 percent. A payroll tax paid by employers is not subject to income taxes. (Economists usually assume that payroll taxes come out of wages.)
The law reduces a worker’s state income tax dollar for dollar for money paid in the payroll tax on their behalf. This move effectively preserves the deductibility of the state income tax, at least for people who get most of their income in wages.
Contrary to what is implied in the NYT piece, Cuomo’s workaround has not been ruled illegal. It is being phased in, so only 1.0 percent of income tax could be shielded in this way in 2018, but that rises to 3.0 percent this year, and 5.0 percent in 2020.
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