Understanding the President’s fiscal cliff offer

Understanding the President’s fiscal cliff offer | Keith Hennessey.

According to Stanford University’s Keith Hennessey, here are the parts of the Obama administration’s offer which are supposedly “non-negotiable”:

Taxes

  • Raise top two income tax rates permanently (for single taxpayers earning $200,000+ and for married filing jointly households earning $250,000+);
  • Extend all other tax rates, credits, and related income tax provisions permanently;
  • Tax dividend income as ordinary income (nearly tripling the current 15% rate);
  • Estate tax: first $3.6M is exempted, everything above $3.6M is taxed at a 45% rate.

Debt limit

  • Increase the debt limit “permanently,” meaning further action by Congress to raise it in the future would not be needed ever again.

Mulligan on Redistribution, Unemployment, and the Labor Market

Mulligan on Redistribution, Unemployment, and the Labor Market | EconTalk.

I am looking forward to listening to this EconTalk podcast on my daily walk today.  Here are the program notes for this podcast:

“Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago and the author of The Redistribution Recession, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in the book. Mulligan argues that increases in the benefits available to unemployed workers explains the depth of the Great Recession that began in 2007 and the slowness of the recovery particularly in the labor market. Mulligan argues that other macroeconomic explanations ignore the microeconomic incentives facing workers and employers.”

We Already Went Over the Fiscal Cliff

We Already Went Over the Fiscal Cliff | The American Conservative.

It’s Paul Krugman vs. Paul Krugman.  Paul Krugman v.2 says there’s nothing to worry about, whereas a previous incarnation of Paul Krugman (from a decade ago – let’s call him Paul Krugman v.1) says that there is plenty to worry about…  Hat tip to my Baylor colleague economist Dave VanHoose for pointing this article out to me…