Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez are the driving force behind proposals for a wealth tax, an idea embraced by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as a way to reduce economic inequality by forcing the richest Americans to pay taxes on everything they own and diverting that money to public services like universal health care and free college tuition.
Their efforts documenting a sharp increase in the concentration of wealth at the very top and their outspokenness have vaulted the tax from a fringe idea in American politics to the center of a reinvigorated debate on taxing the rich.
Not to change the topic here:
Canada: Retail sales unchanged in December – RBC Economics
Canada has just released retail sales data with no changes,Nathan Janzen from RBC Economics reports. The USD/CAD pair fell with the news but has recovered to the previous level and is currently trading at 1.3257.
“Canadian retail sales ended 2019 about where they ended 2018. Excluding price increases, sale volumes in December were up just 0.1% from a year prior.”
“Sales on a month-over-month basis were unchanged from November, both including and excluding prices, leaving overall consumer spending on track to post another lackluster increase in Q4 of last year - and in line with our expectation that overall GDP increased little if at all in the quarter.”
Economics - Are data more like oil or sunlight? | Special report | The Economist
P ASSIONATE GRAMMARIANS have long quarrelled over whether data should be singular or plural (contrary to common usage, this newspaper is sticking with the latter, for now). A better question is why are data so singularly plural? That is, why do they have so many different faces?
For an answer, start with the many metaphors used to describe flows of data. Originally they were likened to oil, suggesting that data are the fuel of the future. More recently, the comparison has been with sunlight because soon, like solar rays, they will be everywhere and underlie everything. There is also talk of data as infrastructure: they should be seen as a kind of digital twin of roads or railways, requiring public investment and new institutions to manage them.
The Most Dangerous Economist : Planet Money : NPR
In 1954, CIA director Allen Dulles recruited an economist, Richard Bissell, as his special assistant. It was the start of one of the strangest roles an economist has played in American history.
Like so many of his generation, Bissell left his day job for government service during World War II. With an impressive resume, big brains, and an upper-class New England pedigree, Bissell went to Washington, DC, and met the right people. They were called "the Georgetown Set" for their swanky parties in the affluent Georgetown neighborhood.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Labour hoarding - Are there too many central bankers? | Finance and economics | The Economist
C ENTRAL BANKERS around the world have long pondered the causes of a slowdown in productivity. Might they be part of the problem? Many national central banks in the euro area have shed staff in the two decades since they ceded many of their responsibilities to the ecb. Yet they still look flabby: the central banks of Germany, France and Italy have many more employees than the Bank of England, whose duties have grown over the same period.
This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Are there too many central bankers?"
The Conservatives' immigration plan puts ideology before economics | Tom Kibasi | Opinion | The
Moreover, after constant attacks on trade unions by successive Conservative governments, collective bargaining no longer has the power to effectively confront employers. This is further exacerbated by the deliberate erosion of employment rights, with greater numbers of workers on precarious zero-hours contracts and poor enforcement of what little rights exist. Again, immigration rules do nothing to solve these problems.
But perhaps most strange of all is the absence of any discussion about demographic change: Britain is a rapidly ageing society, with ever-increasing demands for health and social care and greater pension liabilities. The dependency ratio – the number of workers to economically inactive people, mainly the elderly and children – is deteriorating. Britain needs immigrants not only to work in vital sectors such as social care, but to make the government's finances sustainable.
2020 Economic Report of the President | The White House
Today, the Council of Economic Advisers released its annual Economic Report of the President . The Report shows that three years into the Trump Administration, the U.S. economy continues to outperform pre-2016 election expectations, delivering inclusive gains to American families. As President Trump wrote in his letter introducing the Report, "These results did not come about by accident.
Contrary to expectations that the expansion would slow as it matured, economic output and labor market gains have accelerated over the past three years, as shown in the figure below.
Happening on Twitter
Interesting piece on Saez and Zucman. I'm sympathetic to their analysis, but one really important takeaway is that… https://t.co/oOjW6vOjKE paulkrugman (from New York City) Fri Feb 21 11:25:48 +0000 2020
Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez's work has made them the breakout economists of the Democratic campaign. Zucman's… https://t.co/TjA3oJtHnu jimtankersley (from Washington, D.C.) Fri Feb 21 12:38:42 +0000 2020
Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman have provided the intellectual underpinnings for the tax-the-rich revolution in the… https://t.co/kGrnfI2eoN bencasselman Fri Feb 21 13:00:00 +0000 2020
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