The economy is in the 124th month of the longest expansion on record, and while expansions don’t die from old age alone, fears are rising that a recession may be on the horizon. Recessions can hurt workers and their families in many ways, so policymakers should try to make them as short and shallow as possible. That means temporarily shelving longer-term deficit concerns and enacting anti-...
off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Economic Expansion Now Tied for Longest on Record
June 6, 2019
June 2019 is the 120th month since the Great Recession ended in June of 2009, tying this expansion for the longest on record with the expansion of 1991 to 2001 (see chart). This expansion will become the longest on record next month — barring an extremely unlikely collapse in economic activity that would prompt the National Bureau of Economic Research, the...
Treasury “Analysis” of Tax Bill Assumes What It Claims to Prove
December 12, 2017
The Treasury Department’s new one-page “analysis” of the Senate Finance Committee-passed tax bill purports to analyze how much more economic growth and revenue that bill would generate. In reality, it does no such thing. It first assumes what the growth will be and then...
Taxing College Endowment Income No Way to Pay for Regressive Tax Cuts
December 6, 2017
The House- and Senate-passed Republican tax bills each impose a 1.4 percent excise tax on the income from endowments of some private colleges and universities. The idea appears to stem from a larger proposal, as explained below, to boost educational opportunities for low- and moderate-income students. Congressional Republicans, however, are using the tax to help pay for tax cuts that mainly...
GOP Making Highly Unrealistic Claims for Wage Gains from Tax Cuts
November 13, 2017
In my latest post for US News & World Report’s Economic Intelligence, I discuss how Republicans’ claims that their tax cuts will give American workers a...
Trump’s Unrealistic Expectations for Economic Growth
September 16, 2016
Donald Trump’s economic team says his economic plan would raise annual economic growth to 3.5 percent (it’s averaged 2.1 percent since the economy emerged from recession in mid-2009). Trump himself says...
House Resolution Against Carbon Tax Woefully Off-Base
June 8, 2016
The House is expected to vote on a resolution this week expressing that “a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.” That contrasts sharply with the findings of knowledgeable scientists and economists.
Scientists recognize that unabated greenhouse gas pollution from burning carbon-...
Obama Budget Modernizes Policies for Unemployed Workers
February 11, 2016
The President’s budget includes a very welcome suite of proposals to modernize assistance for workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own. The proposals recognize that today’s labor market is vastly different from the one for which...
Previewing the January Jobs Report
February 4, 2016
Those brave enough to predict think that tomorrow’s jobs report will show a net gain of 188,000 payroll jobs (compared with 292,000 in December) and an unchanged 5.0 percent unemployment rate. Unless tomorrow’s numbers are substantially different from that, they shouldn’t change the prevailing narrative that labor market conditions continue to...
