New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: Cash benefit programs are simply distributive institutions: they, along with our other economic institutions, determine which individuals get to spend money and how much. The government does not spend money on a cash benefit program, it just channels it to someone who spends it. The only coherent objection that… Continue reading Policy Shop: Cash Benefit Programs Are Not Really Government Spending
Let’s start at -0.1
Steve Waldman and Garrett Jones are having an interesting back and forth over at interfluidity and econlib. It’s about optimal tax rates for capital income and labor income. Jones is a big fan of the Chamley-Judd view that capital income should be taxed at zero. Waldman is not, or more accurately, he thinks the Chamley-Judd… Continue reading Let’s start at -0.1
Policy Shop: The Trickiness of Measuring Inequality
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: These two facts — decoupling and income growth divergence — are the only facts you need to make the case that our distributive institutions are failing. Growth is supposed to benefit everyone at relatively equal rates. That is the official story of why productivity growth is the greatest thing… Continue reading Policy Shop: The Trickiness of Measuring Inequality
Poverty and race … and net worth
I wrote a post yesterday about poverty and race. The basic gist was that there are a lot of poor Whites, which is something quite a few people do not realize. The percentage of White people in poverty is lower than Blacks and Hispanics, but because there are just so many Whites, there are also… Continue reading Poverty and race … and net worth
Poverty and race
You would be surprised how many people do not realize that there are a lot of poor whites in this country. This is especially true among the wealthier white social justice types. For a long time, I assumed that these activists did not care that much about class issues, which is perhaps troubling in some… Continue reading Poverty and race