Charles Krauthammer: The right-to-work dilemma – The Washington Post.
Charles Krauthammer writes, “For all the fury and fistfights outside the Lansing Capitol, what happened in Michigan this week was a simple accommodation to reality. The most famously unionized state, birthplace of the United Auto Workers, royalty of the American working class, became right-to-work.”
Why Conservatives Must Surrender on ‘Redistribution’
This is an interesting essay by Bloomberg columnist Josh Barro on how GOP indifference to income inequality, among other things, contributed to the re-election of President Obama. Quoting from the article,
“But the key problem in this debate isn’t that liberals’ ideas are bad, though many of them (especially on trade) are. It’s that conservatives have no serious proposals of their own on rising inequality.”
H/T to my Baylor colleague, economist Steve Green, for pointing this article out to me.
]]>Why Conservatives Must Surrender on ‘Redistribution’
This is an interesting essay by Bloomberg columnist Josh Barro on how GOP indifference to income inequality, among other things, contributed to the re-election of President Obama. Quoting from the article,
“But the key problem in this debate isn’t that liberals’ ideas are bad, though many of them (especially on trade) are. It’s that conservatives have no serious proposals of their own on rising inequality.”
H/T to my Baylor colleague, economist Steve Green, for pointing this article out to me.
Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?
by Sumit Agarwal, Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Amit Seru – #18609 (AP CF)
Abstract:
Yes, it did. We use exogenous variation in banks’ incentives to conform to the standards of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) around regulatory exam dates to trace out the effect of the CRA on lending activity. Our empirical strategy compares lending behavior of banks undergoing CRA exams within a given census tract in a given month to the behavior of banks operating in the same census tract-month that do not face these exams. We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks: in the six quarters surrounding the CRA exams lending is elevated on average by about 5 percent every quarter and loans in these quarters default by about 15 percent more often. These patterns are accentuated in CRA-eligible census tracts and are concentrated among large banks. The effects are strongest during the time period when the market for private securitization was booming.
Peggy Noonan: Beneath the Presidential Platitudes – WSJ.com.
“Obama’s rhetorical blandness conceals an ideological boldness.”
Obama’s Famous Tax ‘Victory’ – WSJ.com WSJ columnist Kim Strassel writes, “Top marginal income tax rates may go up. But the president’s second-term spending wish list will be history.”]]>
Obama’s Famous Tax ‘Victory’ – WSJ.com
WSJ columnist Kim Strassel writes, “Top marginal income tax rates may go up. But the president’s second-term spending wish list will be history.”
Peter Schiff: The Fantasy of a 91% Top Income Tax Rate – WSJ.com.
Peter Schiff parses the historical facts on the incidence of the US income tax; by incidence, I mean the actual taxes that one pays as a function of his or her actual income. By doing so, he corroborates an important fact, which is that the US already has in place one of the more progressive personal income tax systems in the world (for further evidence to this effect, see Table 4.5 of the Tax Foundation article entitled “No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S.”). Furthermore, Schiff notes that “A liberal article of faith that confiscatory taxes fed the postwar boom turns out to be an Edsel of an economic idea.”