Mostly boring thoughts about economic policy. Day job is research director @Economicpolicy, but these tweets are just like my opinion, man.
Jul 13, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Today’s inflation data showed continued rapid growth in the overall CPI, rising 9.1% year over year. A similar reading last month led to a large overreaction by many, including the Federal Reserve, who raised policy rates by 0.75%. 1 epi.org/blog/against-p…
There is even less reason this time to overreact to a hot inflation reading. We all know that the main drivers of today’s large number is commodity prices (mostly energy and food), and we also know that many of these prices have fallen sharply in recent weeks. 2
Nov 12, 2021 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
This is an excellent thread. Reminds me that way back when the COVID-19 economic shock first hit, I wrote a blogpost imagining a world where we held laid-off workers harmless in the face of the shock by continuing to pay them even if services they made couldn’t be delivered. 1
People did this all the time in real-life – continuing to pay, say, household cleaners even if they couldn’t come to the house for safety reasons. I basically wrote that we could scale-up these individual acts of decency with policy. 2 epi.org/blog/with-smar…
Nov 12, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I think over any reasonably non-short run, macro explains 90% of inflation, but, we’re still in the phase of the current inflation spike where sectoral analysis is super eye-opening. 1
I tried to go over some of this here – think it was not terribly done. The expenditure-switching in the face of relative price changes that Jason walks through in his thread is definitely how I view this all working – but not instantaneously! 2 epi.org/blog/inflation…
Nov 10, 2021 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
The BLS reported today that overall inflation was 6.2% on a year-over-year basis in October, up from 5.4% the month before and a notably high number. 1
Core inflation up less, at 4.6% y-o-y, but, still a large number. And yet the main determinants of this rise still look to me to not include macroeconomic overheating. 2
Nov 2, 2021 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
Critics of the BBBA have shifted course yet again. Previous objections to the BBBA centered largely on resuscitating ugly old notions of who is deserving of public benefits and who isn’t. 1
Children whose parents couldn’t find decent work? Underserving of a modest unconditional tax credit. Millionaire heirs? Deserving of maintenance of a zero tax rate on inherited capital gains. 2
Sep 9, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The Chamber released an absolutely ridiculous study this week claiming that ending the carried interest loophole (CIH) would be an economic disaster. If you want to know how not to do policy analysis, check it out here (1): centerforcapitalmarkets.com/resource/impac…
Plenty of people have made detailed, smart critiques of it. Like @CoreyHusak here (2):
Today’s inflation data release has caused a predictable freakout. I’ll admit that the headline number came in a bit higher than I would’ve guessed, but, a closer look at the details doesn’t change my views at all on how macro policy should respond. 1
Macro policy should ignore today’s release and keep on an aggressive go-for-growth path. For a long background on why, see this blogpost I wrote last month. 2 epi.org/blog/inflation…
May 13, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
We released a new paper by @larrymishel and me today. It surveys many empirical investigations into the effects of specific policy decisions on the trajectory of wage growth for typical workers. 1/x epi.org/unequalpower/p…
There was a time when many economists would likely have said that the main determinants of this trajectory were shifts in the deep structural parameters of the economy working themselves out through more-or-less competitive labor markets. 2/x
May 4, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
On the one hand, I agree that if you told me that the reserve army of the jobless would swell by 8.4 million relative to a year year ago, but that wage growth wouldn't fall much, I'd be surprised. 1/x
But there's a lot more to the story of what's happened over the past year. For one, macro policy has been extraordinarily expansionary - I think very few US workers are concerned they'll be laid-off over the coming year simply because "the economy" will be weak overall. 2/x
May 4, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
On top of this excellent thread and op-ed, I'd also note that if workers were too-happy on UI or (rationally, perhaps!) just too-wary about working in face-to-face services like restaurants, you'd at least expect employers to try to wring more hours out of existing employees. 1/x
After all, they're part-time, so not getting UI (almost surely, given the horrible state of our short-time compensation and partial UI programs), and, they're showing up in face-to-face workplaces already. Why not boost their hours? 2/x
Mar 5, 2021 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
The rescue plan that passed the House and is currently being debated by the Senate is economically sound and politically popular. So naturally plenty of people are threatening to go going wobbly on it in the homestretch. 1/n
They need to stiffen their spines. The plan is at the right scale for the problem in front of us. Nothing is certain, but the plan’s overall size and its composition are quite well-suited for the next couple of years and it balances the risks in front of us really well. 2/n
Jul 21, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The Republican-led Senate looks set to approve Judy Shelton as a Federal Reserve governor, and looks to be in no hurry to provide the full amount of relief through UI benefits and aid to S/L govts that is needed to stave off an economic calamity. 1
Further, the Senate has shown no will to force better virus management practices (testing, tracing, etc…) down the throat of the Trump admin, who would prefer to pretend none of this is happening. 2
Jul 20, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
This WaPo story is infuriating. Sounds like Senate republicans want to go cheap (and cruel) on by far the most-important bits of the economic response to Covid – enhanced UI benefits and aid to state/local governments. 1 washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020…
Job growth will be 100% determined by the shortfall of aggregate demand relative to potential GDP for the next year. This shortfall will remain enormous if the enhanced UI benefits and the aid to S/L govts are both ignored – these combined constitute a huge “fiscal cliff”. 2
Jun 2, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Obviously nobody cares (rightly) what I think about the ongoing protests. But it feels wrong to express opinions on twitter about other topics while ignoring the most-important thing going on in the US today - the protests and the unhinged, ultra-violent response of cops.1
Are there cops who are decent people? Sure. But the problem with American policing is that it’s rotten and racist as an institutional matter, and, the few good apples too often get quickly ruined by the rest of the barrel. Last few days have left no doubt about this. 2
Feb 21, 2020 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
There’s a narrative going around that Trump deserves credit, however grudgingly given, by progressives who have long argued that the Fed should be more willing to test the lower limits of unemployment. This seems clearly wrong to me. 1/20
The argument runs that by leaning on Fed chair Powell to keep rates low, Trump has stopped the Fed from raising rates and cutting off the recovery too soon. It’s certainly true that in its history the Fed has cut recoveries short far too often. 2 epi.org/blog/focus-on-…
Feb 28, 2019 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
(1/n) A quick thread on a few things to note about today’s data from the BEA on GDP growth in the last quarter of 2018
(2/n) It’s a month late – the shutdown essentially forced BEA to cancel their “advance” estimates of GDP growth which normally would have come out in late January
