Well, I found last night's debate bitterly disappointing. I had hoped that Warren would use the occasion to start climbing out of the hole she's stumbled into on health care. Instead she dug it deeper 1/
Health care policy is something we understand very well, because every other advanced country already has universal coverage. And what we learn is that there are multiple ways to get there; you don't have to go pure single-payer 2/
We also know that support for Medicare-for-All falls off a lot if you tell people it means abolishing private insurance. So the smart policy is one that gives people an option, and there are several plans out there — now including one from Harris — that do that 3/
Bernie Sanders, of course, is single-payer or bust; he sort of has to be, because it's all he's got. But Warren, who has so many smart proposals, didn't have to go there 4/
True, any progressive who fails the Bernie purity test will face harsh attacks, including dishonest smears 5/
But Kamala Harris was willing to accept that risk, with a plan that's actually pretty radical but not purist. Last night was Warren's chance to show that she's equally bold. She didn't take it 6/
Maybe Warren really believes that single-payer is the only way; if so, I've misjudged her policy acumen. Either way, that was a bad night for someone who should be leading the progressive charge 7/
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Imports are about 14 percent of US GDP. Federal income tax revenue (not including payroll taxes) is about 8 %. So you might think replacing it would require a tariff rate of 8/14 or around 57 percent. But ... 2/
Tariffs would raise the cost of imports to consumers, so we'd import less, which would mean you need a higher tariff rate. But this reduces imports further, meaning a still higher tariff, and so on 3/
The Fed survey of economic well-being is out; some changes at the margin, but the basic story remains that Americans say they're doing mostly OK, their local economy isn't too bad, but the national economy is terrible 1/
Consistent with polling. Here's Quinnipiac on Wisconsin voters 2/
With the recent rise in consumer sentiment, time to revisit this excellent Briefing Book paper. On reflection, I'd do it a bit differently; same basic conclusion, but I think partisan asymmetry explains even more of the remaining low numbers 1/ briefingbook.info/p/asymmetric-a…
The Michigan sentiment index has two components: current conditions and expectations. It's kind of legitimate to have partisan diffs on expectations, if you think your party has better policies. It's the gap on current conditions that's startling 2/
Michigan doesn't provide partisan breakdowns every month until 2017 (hence the limited range of that chart). A quick and dirty approach is to use annual averages, with whatever months they do provide for each year, which lets us push back to 2006 3/
Recent economic news has been extremely good. But there's a strange meme among some D consultants that Biden shouldn't boast about it, because it seems out of touch — that people aren't feeling the good economy. But they are! 1/
The venerable Michigan survey has rocketed up lately 2/
It's true that consumer sentiment is still weaker than you might expect given the economic numbers. But that's largely partisanship. Using Civiqs numbers, Democrats have more or less fully accepted the good news 3/
Immigration is looming larger in the campaign, partly because it's becoming harder for Republicans to run against Biden on the economy. But there's a strong case that immigration has been a key part of Biden's economic success 1/
Inflation has come down so easily in part because of strong labor force growth. How much of that growth can be attributed to foreign-born workers? All of it 2/
Some people might look at that and say that foreigners have stolen 3 million jobs from Americans. But we have full employment, indeed a very tight labor market. Look at what the Conference Board survey says 3/
A tale of two inflation measures. Some analysts are still citing the blue line, when they should be citing the red line. This is professional malpractice 1/
Using annual core CPI puts you way behind the curve, for 2 reasons. First, annual: even core CPI was 4.6 in the first half of 2023, 3.2 in the second half. Second, known lags in official shelter prices lagging far behind market rents 2/
So annual CPI creates a spurious impression of stubborn inflation, with a difficult last mile to cover. PCE puts a lower weight on shelter, and on a shorter-term basis tells us that we've already traveled that last mile 3/