Daily Clips: September 26th, 2016
Progressive family values: A strong column from Mr. Krugman. You can see that he is wrestling with the absurdity of this election quite openly. Here, he is frustrated that there is no discussion about policies that will aid the average American. Join the queue.
US new home sales fall in August: The trend is still positive, however.
Economics has a major blind spot:
Not all economists need to take politics into account, but the ones who give policy advice definitely do. All policy is political as well as technocratic, so econ and political science aren’t really the separate fields you might think from looking at academic departments.
The income gap began to narrow under Obama:
The CEA report argues that Obama has fought inequality in three main ways. First, the administration’s actions during the recession — extending unemployment benefits, temporarily cutting payroll taxes to stimulate growth and bailing out the auto industry, among others — kept unemployment lower than it would otherwise have been. Since recessions tend to hit the lowest-earning workers hardest, policies that mitigate their impact will tend to reduce inequality. Second, the CEA argues that the Affordable Care Act, by making health insurance more affordable for and accessible to low-income workers, has greatly reduced disparities in health care. And third, the CEA argues that the administration’s tax policies — which raised taxes on the rich, cut them for the middle class and expanded programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit that help poor families — made the tax code more progressive. All told, the CEA estimates that the poorest fifth of American households will earn 18 percent more in 2017 than they would have without the administration’s policies.
How to watch the first presidential debate online: Democracy! Yay!
Tweet of the day:
US not on track to meet 2025 carbon pollution cutting goal https://t.co/4J2DxqnyIu pic.twitter.com/hH044z413h
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) September 26, 2016
