It can be hard to separate fact from fiction in the economic statements being tossed around lately. Which of the following are true? Social Security A) The average income of people receiving Social Security benefits is higher than the average…
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Effects of U.S. default unknown even to economists
Nobody knows exactly what political toying with a possible U.S. Treasury default is doing to interest rates, to bond prices, to the value of the U.S. dollar relative to other currencies or to the general growth of the economy and…
Cost of living changes put spotlight on CPI
No index is perfect, even of consumer prices. All give useful information, but none gives a perfect indication of changes in the prices faced by any specific household. And given human nature, some people always will argue that such indexes…
Some government growth isn’t growth at all
I learned a lot about government finance from my mother. Once, when I was 8, on hearing that a prosperous local farmer was tooling around in a new Buick, she sniffed, “Yes, and the county pays his mother’s nursing home…
Solutions to other countries’ financial crises won’t necessarily work for Greece
There are few things more dangerous in economic discourse than a snappy but incorrect analogy. Unfortunately, these are all too common. Nobel winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made one recently, arguing that it might not be so…
A dollar’s value is a poor measure of U.S. prosperity
A U.S. dollar in 2011 has lost 95.9 percent of the buying power it had a century ago. In other words, the Consumer Price Index is 24.3 times as high in 2011 as it was in 1911. Michele Bachmann says…
U.S. wants to muddle through to better economic times
The American people seem to be in a mood to “compile additional data.” A friend of mine, an old hand in Alcoholics Anonymous, uses that phrase to describe early phases in his recovery when he would relapse into heavy drinking.…
Magazine’s list of ‘tax hell’ states doesn’t apply to everyone
Minnesota might not always be No. 1, but we did make No. 2, at least on a list issued by personal-finance magazine Kiplinger’s of states least friendly to retirees. Only Vermont was rated worse based on tabulations of income, sales,…
Economists needs to speak up on candidate tax fantasies
If the average person wanted to understand an economic issue better 40 years ago, all he had to do was subscribe to Newsweek. One week, MIT economist Paul Samuelson – a Keynesian, Democrat and 1970 Nobel Prize winner – would…
Sovereign immunity issues are ripe for reform
True sovereign immunity – the idea that the king can do no wrong – no longer exists for government, but the conditions under which those hurt by government action can be compensated often seem patchwork and capricious. Consider two recent…