Call For Submissions: Got Questions? I’ve Got Answers (Maybe)
We haven’t done a YAIA (“you ask, I answer”) around here for awhile. So, let’s do one! Got questions about any of the stuff we talk about here–unemployment, automation, jobs, full employment, income inequality, budgets, trade, taxes, state policies, minimum wages, growth economics, health care, Europe, financial markets, romance, great music? Submit your questions in [...]
YAIA
Q: In a recent post on the fiscal cliff you seemed to assume that Congress will “go off the cliff” and then retroactively fix everything in Jan or Feb. Assuming politics are about where they are right now—Obama wins and Congress remains divided—precisely what magic are you envisioning such that they all decide to work [...]
YAIA
Haven’t done one of these for a while, so let’s get to it (questions edited). From this post on Media Matters punchy reaction to a misleading WaPo article re health reform and deficits: Q: Medicare and Social Security are funded with a dedicated payroll tax. If the dedicated taxes ended, would the programs end? What [...]
YAIA
I’m overdue for one of these. H/t to HS for help compiling. From my post titled, Poverty, Inequality, and the Stages of Grief: “What is it specifically about the wealthy becoming wealthier that is causing lower incomes to grow at a slower rate: how is their gain another’s loss?” If the structure of economic returns [...]
YAIA (You Ask, I Answer)
Q: Do we know what caused income stagnation or income inequality? Did they both start to occur at the same time? Can we even be sure that they are related? A: Technically, the link between stagnation for middle and low-income households and inequality is the distribution of economic growth. That is, if the economy is [...]
Pesky Brother-in-Law, Thanksgiving Edition
Ah, Thanksgiving. Savory food, family…and that pesky relative with a PhD in Fox News that keeps needling you to the point where you can’t even enjoy Cousin Chrissy’s carrot soufflé. [All references are to actual dishes at my family table! Also, usual disclaimer and Thanksgiving tidings to my bros-in-law--Jim, Clint, Sean, Andy, Tom. Earlier editions [...]
YAIA
That’s “you ask, I answer.” I’ve been remiss in offering answers to many excellent questions folks have been posing in recent weeks, including this AM. So let take (too) brief stabs at some of them (some questions are edited a touch): Re the supercommittee, I wrote: given the automatic triggers, no deal is better than [...]
YAIA, on Video!
Here’s the second installment in OTEs cool new video feature…it’s YAIA on video. See what you think. (Thanks to Michelle for hosting and the production team for banging this out!)
YAIA
That’s “You Ask, I Answer”…a regular feature here. BTW, we recently made a video version of this feature that I’ll try to post next week. Here are a few Q&As and I may add more later, time permitting. Q: GDP is back to the pre-recession level but its composition surely has changed. Are we still [...]
You Ask, I Answer
Q: What is the mechanism by which higher incomes from increases in productivity get back to workers? A: Well, the problem is: it doesn’t. I mean, sometimes it does, and it should, but in recent decades, productivity growth has diverged from the compensation and incomes of middle- and lower-income families. This is really another way [...]
You Ask, I (try to) Answer
Q: A question I keep wanting to ask all these balanced-budget fetishists: Should the US have maintained a balanced budget through WWII? If not, then we agree that there are some circumstances in which a balanced budget is undesirable, and all we are talking about is details. A: OK, this is what you call one [...]
Qs and As
Q: Should the Fed target nominal GDP instead of inflation? A: No, I think they should just get over the 2% upper bound target on inflation. I do like the flexibility inherent in this idea, but I don’t see nominal growth as a better target per se. The problem we face with contemporary monetary policy [...]
Qs and As
Q: Re the debt ceiling, why can’t we just print the money we need to meet our obligations? A: In the first pieces I wrote on this mess, I noted that when a government’s debts are in that gov’t’s currency, you could theoretically “monetize the debt,” i.e., print your way out of it. But I [...]
Qs & As
Q: How can we –Rs and Ds alike – now be assuming that deep cuts are what this economy needs? Are people assuming spending cuts will be expansionary? Is there any sound economics backing this up? Or is it just confidence fairy stuff? A: For some it’s confidence fairy dust, but for others, there are [...]
You Ask, I (try to) Answer
Q: Could you please explain why it’s so important to enact measures to bend the cost curve in the private sector, if you want to save the government money? I mean, isn’t one of the assumptions behind plans like the Ryan proposal that the private sector is more willing (and able) than Congress to be [...]
You Ask, I (sort of) Answer
From a post endorsing another round of a payroll tax cut: Q: How do you hold the Social Security trust fund harmless without reimbursing it from the federal budget? A: It’s a legitimate concern for at least two reasons. First, as you suggest whatever Social Security revenue is diverted from current workers paying into the [...]
You Ask, I (try to) Answer
A few more questions lifted from last weeks’s comments. In response to my post on our unmet infrastructure needs: Q: Given these needs, why didn’t Obama target the stimulus to infrastructure? A: Actually, about $100 billion of the stimulus, around 12%, went to infrastructure. Why not more? The rationale was that stimulus spending should get [...]
Back Attcha: Answering Some Questions from the Comments
On occasion, I hope to answer a few questions posed in the comments section. I won’t get to all of them, of course, and I’ll avoid the rhetorical ones (“How can you be so wrong about everything all the time?!?”). I may change the wording a bit for clarity. Q: Is in fact a form [...]
Jared Bernstein’s areas of expertise include federal and state economic and fiscal policies, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, international comparisons, and the analysis of financial and housing markets.
