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Binyamin Appelbaum Profile picture
Binyamin Appelbaum
@BCAppelbaum
I write editorials about business and economics for The New York Times. My new book, The Economists' Hour, is now on sale! https://t.co/iQLU0ENVQe
Apr 8, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve been looking forward to this book for years and it’s very good. It makes an argument that’s new to me, at least: That the prime movers in the ascent of economics were liberals “who wanted to make government work better and more effectively.” The ultimate effect of making economics the language of policymaking was, as Berman writes, to “constrict the horizons of possibility.” But in her telling, this was an unintended consequence.
Jul 20, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Readers struggling to understand why filing taxes is so much harder in the U.S. than pretty much everywhere else. Cont.
Jun 1, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There would be some advantages if we could figure out how to keep the people and car plants in Ohio.
wsj.com/articles/the-s… Image I remember an Ohio official telling me some years ago that the people would come back eventually because there's water in Ohio. Who knows? Maybe so.
May 25, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I find the fixation on 1970s inflation puzzling for several reasons. Inflation really wasn't that high, certainly not by the standards of "historically memorable inflations." Also, high inflation was good for a lot of people. Student loan debt disappeared! Home ownership spiked! I think a lot about this guy, quoted in the Times in 1978.

(The passage is from The Economists' Hour):
Mar 21, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“The top 1% of households fail to report about 21% of their income.” wsj.com/articles/high-… It seems probable to me that “let’s make sure the rich pay taxes like the rest of us” would be a winning political issue cc: all the politicians
Mar 21, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The W-2 makes it hard to lie about wage income. But the government has no comparable system for verifying income from businesses. The result is that many business owners are engaged in blatant fraud at public expense. nytimes.com/2021/03/20/opi… The IRS estimates that Americans report on their taxes less than half of all income that is not subject to some form of third-party verification like a W-2. Less than half! Billions of dollars in business profits, rent and royalties are hidden from the government each year.
Dec 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Antitrust law was quite literally created to put limits on successful businesses. Not to protect consumers, per se. Certainly not to promote innovation. Standard Oil sold the best and cheapest kerosene. The U.S. broke up the company because its dominance created other kinds of problems. It was bad for other businesses. And it was really bad for democracy.
Jun 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's unfortunate that tens thousands of Americans are likely to die of the coronavirus in the coming months because the president is incapable of leading an effective federal response. A completely feckless president is actually not something the founders particularly anticipated. Impeachment is there for corruption or treason. We have an amendment to deal with health problems. But the system has no remedy for this.
Jun 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Unemployment insurance is... an insurance program. You pay in while you're employed. You get benefits while you're not. On Laffer's island, the unemployed farmer is just drawing on the contributions he made during the fat years. I mean, it's a laughable metaphor but it captures a real issue: The modern Republican Party genuinely doesn't seem to understand how insurance works. It's a recurring theme in their critiques of government programs.
Mar 22, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A big reason the Senate can't pass a bailout bill is that Republicans are refusing to require big companies that get bailouts to refrain from firing workers or imposing pay cuts.

Also, Republicans are opposing the expansion of unemployment benefits for workers who do get fired. I'm genuinely interested to hear the rationale for giving federal money to companies and then letting them fire their workers. I assume it has something to do with economic efficiency.
Mar 18, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
6,300 people in Rhode Island filed for COVID-19 related unemployment benefits on Monday.

That is more than 1 percent of the state's entire workforce.

wpri.com/health/coronav… More people filed for unemployment benefits in Massachusetts on Monday than filed during the entire month of February.

wcvb.com/article/more-f…
Mar 14, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The bill that the House passed last night only guarantees paid coronavirus sick leave to ~20 percent of American workers.

I repeat: Most workers still aren't guaranteed paid sick leave.

nytimes.com/2020/03/14/opi… Republicans insisted on an exemption for companies with more than 500 employees, and Democrats caved.

McDonald’s, Amazon, and pretty much any other company that you’ve ever heard of — THEY ARE EXEMPTED.

And that loophole includes 54 percent of all workers.
Mar 5, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The coronavirus has been a known threat to public health for more than two months. Today -- today! -- the Trump administration finally decided to let doctors determine who should be tested.
nytimes.com/2020/03/04/hea… It's only fair to note that large-scale testing hasn't been possible until now -- and may still not be possible -- because the Trump administration also failed to establish the necessary infrastructure.
Feb 9, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
The founders dressed the new republic in the architecture of Greece and Rome to assert its legitimacy. Now the United States is nearly 250 years old; it no longer needs to wear borrowed clothes. nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opi… Here are some of the buildings created under a 30-year old federal program to encourage excellence in civic architecture. The Moakley courthouse in Boston:
Oct 30, 2019 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Four years ago, the Republican presidential candidates met for a debate at that library, with that plane as the backdrop.

They were asked what we should do about climate change.

And they fought for the chance to tell the moderates and the audience that we should do nothing. At that debate on September 16, 2015, Marco Rubio declared, "We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather."
Oct 21, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Chile is the poster child for extreme economic inequality in a developed country. I spent time there last year for my book (which has a chapter on Chile) and what I found hardest to understand is why there wasn't more political unrest. Now there is.

nytimes.com/2019/10/19/wor… A few choice facts about Chile and inequality:

In Chile, the social security system is basically designed to redistribute wealth from the masses to the rich, because workers are required to put their savings into private investment funds that charge ridiculous fees.
Mar 18, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Tragic news today about the death of Princeton economist Alan Krueger. Among his contributions to economics and public policy, he helped to lay the intellectual groundwork for the revival of minimum wage laws. (1/x) Back in the 1980s, it was widely accepted that minimum wage laws were bad. By widely I mean that Democrats thought so too. In 1987, the Times described "a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed." nytimes.com/1987/01/14/opi… (2/x)