Economics Roundtable
Calculated Risk
Read the Bill McBride interview.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
June Payroll Employment
The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.
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Focus on the Problem
U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.
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Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
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Tax Foundation
On May 22 Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law a bill raising income taxes and tobacco taxes and ending certain business tax breaks. The bill increases tax rates for single filers making over $100,000 ($150,000 for a couple) with a new top rate of 5.75% on income over ...
This week in Minnesota politics has been instructive in what kinds of projects warrant state money and attention. Governor Dayton signed a bill approving the construction of a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings which he boasted would create thousands of jobs and would not use "a single dollar ...
Some months ago, we here at the Tax Foundation first heard about the strange case of Pete Vegas and his six-figure tax bill from the state of Washington. Pete runs an agribusiness company that does business mostly in California, Arkansas, and Texas, although they ship their products nationwide. He explained ...
Today's Monday Map looks at state excise tax rates on table wine (that is, ordinary wine that is neither carbonated or fortified.) At the top of the list is Alaska, which levies a tax of $2.50 per gallon; Louisiana levies the smallest excise tax at 11 cents per galon.
According to the IRS and the Tax Foundation's migration calculator, 612,520 people renounced their New York State citizenship and moved to Florida between 2000 and 2010. They took with them nearly $20 billion in adjusted gross income, after adjusting for inflation. During the same period, 208,784 Pennsylvania residents renounced ...
I recently noticed an article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston in which he claims the following:
"Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?
On June 12, North Dakota voters will decide whether to abolish property taxes in their state. Measure 2 would, depending on the perspective, be an $800 million blow to essential government services or merely the latest of a long string of sensible taxpayer restraints on property taxation in the footsteps ...
Facebook.com co-founder Eduardo Saverin—the good guy from The Social Network—was allegedly muscled out of the company but sued to get a 4 percent stake. Since 2009, the Brazilian-born Saverin has lived in Singapore, and he's in the news this week because he's giving up his U.S. citizenship right before ...
The Louisiana legislature has approved a bill that would continue to provide tax breaks to the NBA's New Orleans Hornets. The tax credits, $37 million over ten years, are part of the state's Quality Jobs economic development program. The bill now goes to Governor Jindal for approval. According to the Times-Picayune, ...