Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Edgy Optimist:
Obama sees the limits of government
President Barack Obama made the middle class the focus of his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He was lauded by some as fighting for jobs and opportunity, and even for launching a “war on inequality” equivalent to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s War on Poverty. He was assailed by others for showing his true colors as a man of big government and wealth redistribution.
Yet the initiatives Obama proposed are striking not for their sweep but for their limited scope. That reflects both pragmatism and realism: Not only is the age of big government really over, so is the age of government as the transformative force in American society. And that is all for the best.
Wait a minute, you might reasonably object: What about healthcare? What about the proposals for minimum -wage increases, for expanded preschool, for innovation centers, for $50 billion in spending on roads and infrastructure? Surely those are big government and aim, effectively or not, for transformation?
Healthcare and the changes under the Affordable Care Act are significant, and for now they have expanded the scope and cost of government However, those costs appear to be growing more slowly than expected, at least according to the Congressional Budget Office. While healthcare costs are increasingly untenable, the issue is one of healthcare costs for society as a whole. Recent legislation means government bears more of them, but someone will bear them no matter what.
from The Great Debate:
Populists, plutocrats and the GOP sales tax
February 1913 marked a turning point in U.S. history. One hundred years ago this month, the states ratified the 16th Amendment, clearing the way for adoption of a federal income tax. Two decades before, in 1892, the Populist Party had first put a progressive income tax on the national agenda.
The income tax faced steep conservative opposition. Since it was enacted, in fact, the political wars over income tax have never stopped. Conservatives battled against it when it was first proposed and have continued the struggle ever since. Now, Tea Party conservativism has given that fight new force.
from David Rohde:
Obama’s ‘war on inequality’
He quoted Jack Kennedy but sounded more like Lyndon Johnson.
In an audacious State of the Union address Tuesday, President Barack Obama made sweeping proposals to reduce poverty, revive the middle class and increase taxes on the “well off.” While careful to not declare it outright, an emboldened second-term president laid out an agenda that could be called a “war on inequality.”
“There are communities in this country where no matter how hard you work, it is virtually impossible to get ahead,” Obama declared in a blunt attack one a core conservative credo. “And that’s why we need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them.”
from Chrystia Freeland:
Interview with Christine Lagarde at the IMF
Managing Director of the IMF Christine Lagarde sat down for an interview with Chrystia Freeland yesterday, January 17th, following the IMF's New Year Press Briefing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OM12HY3Js4&feature=player_embedded#!
CHRYSTIA FREELAND:
Thank you for joining me, Madame Lagarde.
CHRISTINE LAGARDE:
My pleasure.
CHRYSTIA FREELAND:
One of your themes as we enter 2013 is that financial reform must continue. And you have just said that you're concerned, you see a waning commitment to financial reform. What do you see going on?
from The Great Debate:
Examine inequality’s causes before prescribing solutions
Fear and loathing of income inequality is both totally understandable and ultimately misplaced.
It’s understandable because everywhere around us it seems as if top income earners ‑ those latter-day kulaks vilified as the “1 Percent” by the Occupy crowd and populist politicians ‑ are gaining while the rest of us seem barely able to hang on to a lower-middle-class standard of living.
from The Great Debate:
Government can reduce inequality, but chooses not to
This essay is a response to the Reuters special report The Unequal State of America.
Income inequality is a difficult story to get your arms around, and I think Reuters has done a splendid job. I was particularly intrigued to read about the hollowing out of middle-class jobs within the federal government in D.C. I wasn’t aware that the government had so thoroughly followed the private sector’s lead in this regard.
from The Great Debate:
Big Love: The GOP and the super-rich
Will Republicans buck anti-tax orthodoxy and strike a budget deal? Since election night, they have begun to utter the dreaded “r-word” (revenue). But they have insisted that those revenues come from reducing loopholes — not increasing rates.
Many argue that this stance reflects the power of Grover Norquist and his no-new-taxes pledge. Yet the pledge forbids not only raising rates but also raising revenue by reducing deductions. So why are such reductions O.K. while President Barack Obama’s call for higher marginal rates is not?
from Chrystia Freeland:
Obama, the super-rich and the election
Among the losers in the United States this week are the super-rich, who spent unprecedented millions to evict President Barack Obama from the White House. The investing class turned sharply and vociferously against the president many of them had supported in 2008. On Tuesday night, the plutocrats lost their shirts.
"Boy, they threw away a lot of money," Theda Skocpol, a Harvard professor, told me. "It was very interesting to hear on Tuesday night about all the corporate jets packed in Logan Airport" for Mitt Romney's party in Boston.
from The Great Debate:
The unequal reality of Friday’s jobs report
Today’s U.S. Labor Department report on jobs confirms what we’ve known for more than a year: We have entered a new normal for jobs, with marginal gains, marginal losses and higher levels of unemployment becoming the unfortunate norm.
It also confirms that where you live, what you do, what race you are and what level of education you’ve attained profoundly shape your employment prospects. In spite of claims of a youth unemployment crisis and ample anecdotes about a punishing job markets for recent college grads, there is – statistically – no job crisis for the college-educated, with their unemployment rate hovering around 4 percent. That contrasts with the national average of 7.9 percent and an average in the mid-teens for those with a high-school degree. For African Americans of any education level, the rate is 14.3 percent; for Hispanics, 10 percent; for Asian Americans, 4.9 percent. If you live in Nebraska or North Dakota, the jobless rate is less than 4 percent, thanks to robust prices for grains and corn and the oil and gas of the shale revolution. If you live in Oklahoma, Iowa, Minnesota or Kansas, the rate is below 6 percent. But in California, Nevada or New Jersey, it is at or above 10 percent.
from The Great Debate:
Inequality is more relevant than ever this election
The issue of inequality doesn’t usually feature in U.S. presidential debates. Compared with those in Europe, Americans are more relaxed about seeing higher pay as the reward for effort and ability.
This time it is different. The Occupy movement reflected the general anger toward Wall Street bankers who raked in millions during the boom years and then got bailed out in the bust that they helped to create. Income inequality has been quietly rising in the United States for almost four decades. President Barack Obama plans to increase taxes on those with high incomes and Governor Mitt Romney is against such "class warfare."
