John Case has sent you a link to a blog:
Blog: Enlighten Radio Podcasts
Post: Winners and Losers Podcast: Trumpers attack on Local Control, Scout Masters on The Jamb0ree Fiasco
Link: http://podcasts.enlightenradio.org/2017/08/winners-and-losers-podcast-trumpers.html
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Wednesday, August 2, 2017
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Who Ate Republicans’ Brains?
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Who Ate Republicans' Brains? // NYT > Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/opinion/republicans-trumpcare-obamacare-lies.html
Four decades of intellectual and moral deterioration.
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Should-Read: Sarah Kliff : On Twitter: "A stunning pair of charts of the CBO report from my colleague @alv9n https://t....
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Should-Read: Sarah Kliff : On Twitter: "A stunning pair of charts of the CBO report from my colleague @alv9n https://t.... // Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/07/should-read-sarah-kliff-on-twitter-a-stunning-pair-of-charts-of-the-cbo-report-from-my-colleague-alv9n.html
Should-Read: Sarah Kliff: On Twitter: "A stunning pair of charts of the CBO report from my colleague @alv9n https://t.co/nZHz8OMurV" https://twitter.com/sarahkliff/status/879460806198538241:
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Monday, July 31, 2017
Another year of congressional inaction has further eroded the federal minimum wage
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Another year of congressional inaction has further eroded the federal minimum wage // Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epi.org/publication/another-year-of-congressional-inaction-has-further-eroded-the-federal-minimum-wage/
This week marks the eighth anniversary of the last time the federal minimum wage was raised, from $6.55 to $7.25 on July 24, 2009. Since then, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by 12.5 percent as inflation has slowly eroded its value. However, this decline in the buying power of the minimum wage over the past eight years is not even half the overall decline in the minimum wage's value since the late 1960s. As the figure below shows, at its high point in 1968, the federal minimum wage was equal to $9.90 in today's dollars. That means that workers at the minimum wage today are paid roughly 27 percent less than their counterparts almost 50 years ago.
Measuring the minimum wage against changes in prices is only one way to think of where it could be today. Given growth in the economy and improvements in labor productivity over the past half century, the minimum wage could have been raised to a point considerably higher than its 1968 inflation-adjusted value. As the middle line in the figure shows, if the minimum wage had been raised since 1968 at the same growth rate as average wages of typical U.S. workers, it would be $11.62 today. (We measure wages here by changes in average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory production workers, a group that comprises roughly 80 percent of all U.S. workers and excludes highly-paid supervisors and executives.)
Snapshot
Prior to 1968, the federal minimum wage was raised at roughly the same pace as growth in labor productivity—i.e., the rate at which the average worker can produce income from each hour of work. This makes sense—if the economy as a whole can produce more income per hour of work, it means there's capacity for wages across the distribution to grow at a similar rate. Had the minimum wage risen at the same pace as productivity after 1968, it would be over $19 per hour today.
No matter how you measure it, it's clear that the federal minimum wage is overdue for an increase. If we raised it to $15 by 2024, 41 million American workers would benefit. Read more about who would benefit from raising the minimum wage.
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Trump Move Would Boost Premiums, Raise Federal Costs, Destabilize Insurance Market
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Trump Move Would Boost Premiums, Raise Federal Costs, Destabilize Insurance Market // Center on Budget: Comprehensive News Feed
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/trump-move-would-boost-premiums-raise-federal-costs-destabilize-insurance-market
Ending the CSR payments would boost premiums for many consumers, raise overall federal marketplace subsidy costs, and likely cause some insurers to withdraw from the marketplaces.
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Chart of the Week: Electric Takeover in Transportation
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Chart of the Week: Electric Takeover in Transportation // IMF Blog
https://blogs.imf.org/2017/07/31/chart-of-the-week-electric-takeover-in-transportation/
By IMFBlog
July 31, 2017
An electric car recharges at a meter in London: The UK is the latest country to announce plans to end fossil fuel vehicle sales by 2040 (photo: Sasha Fox Walters/iStock by Getty Images)
The switch from horses to automobiles in the 20th century paved the way for the rise of oil-based transportation and energy use. Today, electric vehicle ownership is picking up speed. Greater affordability of electric vehicles will likely steer us away from our current sources of energy for transportation, and toward more environmentally friendly technology. And that can happen sooner than you think.
Our Chart of the Week from a recent IMF working paper shows that the transition away from motor vehicles could happen in the next 10 to 25 years, based on parallel shifts in the 20th century. Patterns observed in the early days of the horse-car transition closely resemble present-day electric vehicle adoption rates. Between 2011 and 2015, the average annual growth rate of electric vehicle ownership was 120 percent. This is, in fact, slightly faster growth than that of motor vehicles during a comparable timeframe in the past. Using the horse-car parallel, the paper forecasts that by 2040 motor vehicles could mostly disappear in advanced economies, and could comprise about a third of the fleet of all cars in emerging market and developing economies.
Even as Tesla spearheads the transition to electric vehicles, the auto industry is also focusing greater attention on electric vehicles and rapidly increasing the number of models offered, including SUVs. As recently as last month, Volvo announced that it will produce only electric or plug-in hybrids as early as 2019.
Meanwhile, many countries are running with the idea. Both the UK and France are aiming to phase out diesel and gas vehicles by 2040. China has become the largest market for electric vehicles, and India recently announced ambitious plans to get millions of electric vehicles on the road by 2030. Every month seems to bring news confirming a global shift in transportation technology.
But the switch to electric cars has deep implications for the auto industry, climate change, and the oil market.
The auto industry must shift gears to deal with potential disruption. Electric cars take fewer parts to produce, and require less maintenance than motor vehicles. Therefore, investment in people is critical—whether job training or reskilling programs—to enable workers in both advanced and emerging market economies to work with new technologies, such as self-driving cars and in industries such as battery production.
At the same time, the environmental benefits could be huge, leading to reduced emissions over time, and helping achieve the climate change goals of the Paris accord. What this means is that policymakers and businesses must anticipate the potential consequences of the rise of electric cars and start implementing the right policies for a smooth ride.
Stay tuned for a forthcoming blog on the implications for the oil market.
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