Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Is Paul Krugman writing editorials now, too?

TEll every wing-nut you have any contact with tht the national sales tax is a copy of the French tax system. Ask them why they want to copy the French tax system.

Does "ownership society" mean that I own my pro-rata share of the ever-expanding national debt?

Well, the French tax system is at least compensated for by excellent retirement and medical benefits and excellent employment protections.

Brad DeLong writes:
>
> The New York Times editorial board does not seem to like
> George W. Bush's "ownership society":

Alas, this piece of work appears to be a forgery; it was not written by the editorial board of the NY Times. The use of the several terms, particularly in combination, is very diagnostic:

"mainly", "sufficiently", "properly", "largely" "mania", "slogan","spiraling", "de facto", "skewed", "joke", "shift", "distribution", "squeeze", "regressive", "full advantage" (with a negative), "worst of all worlds", and "is exactly what"

These are all very over-represented in the writings of Paul Krugman. By an interesting coincidence, his column does not appear today because he is "on vacation". Also, there are obvious and direct similarities between this opinion piece and Krugman's 8/13/04 column.

So I think the Times editorial board should come clean: they only lightly edited this piece and made it look like some collective effort on their series of "The Big Issues" editorials. As if the rest of them had anything to do with it.

Jeez.

Mention Paul Krugman and look what happens.

Does AS now = relation homme animal?

kaleidescope wrote, "A consumption tax needn't be regressive if -- in addition to taxing things like food service and toilet paper -- it is applied to things that rich people buy: stocks, bonds, private education, architects, doctors, lawyers, estate planners, real property."

Well, you're close. Of course, the first tax to levy is a heavy tax on Ricardian land rent---both efficient and equitable.

http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/geo-faq.htm

"In 2004, take-home pay as a share of the economy dropped to its lowest level since 1929..."

Bwah! And what portion of employee compensation was non-take home pay -- pensions, medical benefits, child care programs, etc, not to mention employment taxes -- in 1929??

You've got to love the Times' editorial board's economic analysis! Just recently they explained...

"The United States gained 144,000 jobs last month, which is just barely enough to keep up with the number of people entering the work force .... There was a tiny reduction in the unemployment rate -- because the work
force became smaller"

The work force is growing larger and smaller at the same time!!

I mean, you have to love it for it's entertainment value. I can hardly imagine anyone seriously citing it in an appeal to authority on things economic ... unless it's the best one can do, of course.

What's to stop a person from doing their major consumption out of the country? Vacations, dining, purchases that can be shipped home. Seems like a nice loophole for those who like to travel.

Or better yet, can I live like a miser, and then move myself and my savings to another country tax free?

The consumption tax alway seemed to me like an more of an incentive for smuggling than saving. But what do I know?

Looks like Brad got hit with Comment Spam. Ick. Time to get a blacklist MT plugin, Brad!

AS far as Jim Glass's snarkiness--the unemployment rate can go down, even if relatively few jobs are being created, if people give up actively seeking employment (and thus not counted).

Some simple math.

Take 100 people as a base.

80 of them are employed, 20 of them are not and actively seek work. The unemployment rate is 20%.

Now, 2 of those people get jobs, but another 10 drop out of the workforce and give up.

So, 82 out of 90 people are employed, so the Unemployment rate is now 8.8%

Cold comfort to the people no longer counted as being unemployed though, isn't it?

I'm not an economist (warning!), but it would seem to me that this structural change would mean a trajectory of (1) lower domestic consumption, (2) higher savings (the money has to go somewhere), (3) lower investment, esp. in stocks & bonds (because of (1)---nobody invests in a declining revenue stream), and (4) deflation (that pesky disincentive to buy, again).

Question: could someone explain how exactly one drops out of the workforce? Or, from another angle, what constitutes actively looking for work? Is it measured by someone being on unemployment (runs out at 26 weeks) or using a placement service, or what? I've yet to find a good, concise answer to this.