Daily Clips: December 11th, 2015
I’ll never get sick of watching Colbert and Stewart together. Long live the dynamic duo.
A brokered convention? Here’s an interesting discussion between FiveThirtyEight’s team on the likelihood of the GOP turning to a brokered convention (if you are unsure what that means, click on the link). Nate Silver puts the odds of such a convention at 10%, while their senior political writer, Harry Enten, says “the Eagles had only a 12 percent shot to beat the Patriots last week, according to our Elo ratings. I put a contested convention on about the same plane as that.”
Jeb!’s tax plan loses trillions and worsens inequality: Jared Bernstein looks at the Tax Policy Center’s analysis of Jeb Bush’s proposed tax cuts, pointing out that “the bad stuff in the plan far outweighs the good.”
The Bush plan:
- Lowers tax rates on both individuals and businesses (on both earnings and investment income)
- Repeals the estate tax
- Increases the Earned Income Tax Credit
- The bulk of the tax cuts go to the wealthy (surprise): 39 percent to the 1 percent, 10 percent to the middle fifth, and 2 percent to the bottom fifth. In other words, regressive.
US consumer spending gauge rises strongly: It’s the most wonderful time of the year…According to Reuters, “retail sales excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services increased 0.6 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in October.”
“It dismisses any concerns of a potential slump in household spending after a couple of weaker months in August and September,” said Steve Murphy, U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
