Arguably the bigger problem is that a lot of recipients *wouldn't* spend the money (whether at Wal-Mart or elsewhere) -- savings for high-income households, many of whom would qualify for some amount of stimulus aid, are already way up. Stim check likely to get saved by them too
The households with a greater marginal propensity to consume are the lower-income ones that suffered an employment loss. Targeting aid to them (through UI, food stamps, direct checks) is not only more humanitarian/fairer; it's also likely to have bigger bang for stimulus buck
Based on the phaseout provisions in the House bill that increases max stimulus payments to $2000/person, a family of five earning up to $350k would get cut a check, per @BudgetHawks. crfb.org/blogs/how-much…
See also this useful thread from @p_ganong on what we know about one measure of savings, the amount in people's bank accounts -- broken down by income quartile
Horses that reportedly got traded today: Repubs demanded tax break for corporate meal expenses ("three martini lunches"). Dems agreed, in exchange for expanded tax credits for low income families & working poor
Pretty much sums up the parties' priorities washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020…
At a moment when 27.4 million adults — about 13% — report that they sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the last seven days, Republicans demand that the government now subsidize rich people's meals. census.gov/data-tools/dem…
And needless to say, insufficient tax deductibility of business meals hardly seems to be the reason execs aren't going to steakhouses right now. it's covid
Undergraduate enrollment fell 3.6% this fall compared to a year earlier. Massive decline (10.1%) at community colleges, but an increase at private for-profits nscresearchcenter.org/current-term-e…
enrollment of first-time students down an "unprecedented" 13.1%. at community colleges, enrollment of first-time students plummeted an astounding 21% nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/upl…
Select factoids from their resumes: Rouse previously served as a member of the CEA under Obama. Has done a LOT of work on education (major issue right now obvi). Her paper best covered by popular press tho is probably one about "blind" orchestra auditions
Boushey has done a ton of work on women in the workforce (whose position is more precarious than usual lately, due to covid). For years she's been running the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which focuses on inequality
Fifteen Asia-Pacific economies formed the world's largest free trade bloc on Sunday, a China-backed deal that excludes the United States, which had left a rival Asia-Pacific grouping under President Donald Trump. cnbc.com/2020/11/15/asi…
When Obama spoke of having the US, rather than China, “write the rules of the road” on trade, this is the alternative trade pact (then still in negotiations) that he specifically warned about. washingtonpost.com/opinions/presi…
Pacific trade pact that Obama admin negotiated & that Trump then pulled us out of, TPP, was put into place without us, renamed CPTPP. To my knowledge Biden still hasn't said whether he would rejoin the deal. Here's what he told The Post during the primary: washingtonpost.com/graphics/polit…
USCIS has released a new version of the naturalization civics test. There are 128 questions total, of which 20 will be asked. Candidates must answer 12 of these 20 correctly. uscis.gov/citizenship-re…
interesting to see what questions got added. this seems to be a new one
Here is a test question whose "correct" answer changed from past test (1st image) to new one (2nd image). And another similar q added about House (3rd).
Perhaps thematically related to Trump administration's ongoing efforts to change who the census should count for apportionment
In a recent poll asking voters to name Trump's "major accomplishments," top response had been "boosting the stock market" today.yougov.com/topics/politic…
"Boosting the stock market" as your greatest presidential achievement would be lackluster enough. U.S. stocks are mostly owned by rich people and foreigners, as @stevertax has pointed out.
But then to lose even *that* meager bragging right... taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-own…