Bernie Sanders and the Wall Street Journal's $18 Trillion

September 16, 2015

16 Septiembre 2015

The Wall Street Journal decided to take Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign seriously enough to calculate the cost of the programs that he proposed. Their price tag was $18 trillion over the next decade. This is presumably supposed to scare people because, let’s face it $18 trillion is a really big number.

Much of the fright factor disappears when we realize that $15 trillion of this $18 trillion comes from the WSJ’s estimate of the cost of Sanders’ universal Medicare program. That is a considerable chunk of change, but as Kevin Drum and others have pointed out this will not be new money out of people’s pockets. For the most part this is money that employers are now paying for their workers’ health care insurance. Instead, under a universal Medicare system the government would get this money in tax revenue. Since Canada and the other wealthy countries with universal Medicare-type systems all have much lower per capita health care costs than the United States (the average is less than half the cost), in all probability we would be paying less for our health care under the Sanders’ system than we do now.

This still leaves $3 trillion for us to get frightened over, and this still looks like a really big number. As a point of reference, GDP over the next decade is projected at roughly $240 trillion. This makes the cost of the rest of Sanders’ plans equal to less than 1.3 percent of GDP.

Should we worry about that? The increase in annual military spending from 2000 to the peaks of Iraq/Afghanistan wars was roughly 1.8 percent of GDP. This was also the size of military buildup that took place under President Reagan. Jeb Bush is proposing to cut taxes by roughly this amount if he gets elected.

In short, the additional spending that Senator Sanders has proposed is not trivial, but we have seen comparable increases in the past for other purposes. We can clearly afford the tab, the question is whether free college, rebuilding the infrastructure, early childhood education and the other items on the list are worth the price.

The Wall Street Journal decided to take Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign seriously enough to calculate the cost of the programs that he proposed. Their price tag was $18 trillion over the next decade. This is presumably supposed to scare people because, let’s face it $18 trillion is a really big number.

Much of the fright factor disappears when we realize that $15 trillion of this $18 trillion comes from the WSJ’s estimate of the cost of Sanders’ universal Medicare program. That is a considerable chunk of change, but as Kevin Drum and others have pointed out this will not be new money out of people’s pockets. For the most part this is money that employers are now paying for their workers’ health care insurance. Instead, under a universal Medicare system the government would get this money in tax revenue. Since Canada and the other wealthy countries with universal Medicare-type systems all have much lower per capita health care costs than the United States (the average is less than half the cost), in all probability we would be paying less for our health care under the Sanders’ system than we do now.

This still leaves $3 trillion for us to get frightened over, and this still looks like a really big number. As a point of reference, GDP over the next decade is projected at roughly $240 trillion. This makes the cost of the rest of Sanders’ plans equal to less than 1.3 percent of GDP.

Should we worry about that? The increase in annual military spending from 2000 to the peaks of Iraq/Afghanistan wars was roughly 1.8 percent of GDP. This was also the size of military buildup that took place under President Reagan. Jeb Bush is proposing to cut taxes by roughly this amount if he gets elected.

In short, the additional spending that Senator Sanders has proposed is not trivial, but we have seen comparable increases in the past for other purposes. We can clearly afford the tab, the question is whether free college, rebuilding the infrastructure, early childhood education and the other items on the list are worth the price.

The Elite's Childlike Commitment to Austerity

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 15, 2015

15 Septiembre 2015

The landslide victory of left-wing candidate Jeremy Corbyn for Labor Party leader in the United Kingdom has many establishment types bent out of shape. The Blair-wing of the party was literally obliterated, with Corbyn drawing more than four times the votes of his nearest competitor. After giving the country the war in Iraq and the housing bubble whose collapse led to the 2008-2009 recession and financial crisis, the discontent of the Labour Party's rank and file is understandable. But naturally the elite types are fighting back. In this vein we get a lengthy piece in the New Yorker by film critic Anthony Lane warning us of the evils of Jeremy Corbyn. I will leave for others the discussion of Mr. Corbyn's friends and associates. I am mostly interested in Lane's treatment of Corbyn's economic agenda. He tells readers: "The national deficit would be erased not through austerity, as practiced by the heinous Conservatives, but through taxes on the rich and by what Corbyn calls 'quantitative easing for people.' This means, we are told, that the Bank of England will print more money: an endearing and almost childlike solution, though not one that has met with unqualified success elsewhere." First off, "quantitative easing for people" is obviously a political slogan. As such, it is not obviously more silly than "putting people first," or "yes we can." The issue is the substance behind the slogan. What Corbyn is proposing is directly financing spending by printing money. If that is "childlike" then folks like Paul Krugman have a similar affinity for childlike solutions to economic problems. Just last week, in reference to Japan's continuing economic weakness, Krugman told readers: "What’s remarkable about this record of dubious achievement is that there actually is a surefire way to fight deflation: When you print money, don’t use it to buy assets; use it to buy stuff. That is, run budget deficits paid for with the printing press." By stuff, Krugman means things like child care, schools, hospitals, cutting edge Internet, research into clean energy, and other useful items. If the economy is suffering from a lack of demand, the government can directly create it by spending money. And, since the economy is below its potential, it doesn't need tax money to finance this spending, it doesn't even need to borrow, it can simply print the money.

Robert Samuelson on Productivity and Living Standards

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 14, 2015

14 Septiembre 2015

Robert Samuelson used his column today to note the weak productivity growth in recent years. The piece tells that there are two ways to improve living standards for the typical person. We can alter the distribution between the top and everyone else or we can increase output. He tells readers that Democrats tend to emphasize distribution while Republicans emphasize productivity. He then points out that redistribution has limits, since it is a one-time story, whereas more rapid productivity growth leads to ongoing benefits. There are a few points worth making here. First, while Samuelson is right that redistribution is a one-time story over a long period of time it can be a big story. If the typical worker's compensation had kept pace with productivity growth, their pay would be more than 40 percent higher today. For the median worker with an hourly wage around $18 and and hourly compensation around $22 an hour, this would translate into more than $16,000 a year in addition compensation for a full-time full-year worker. This would be real money for most people. Furthermore, if compensation were to keep pace with even a slow rate of productivity growth going forward, it would mean that workers would see rising living standards on an ongoing basis. In this respect, much of the political elite in the United States has argued that even modest increases in the payroll tax (e.g. 0.1 percentage point annually) would be devastating and not worth considering. If the idea of raising the payroll tax by 0.1 percentage points annually is a huge deal, the prospect of getting ten times as much by addressing inequality must be an incredibly huge deal. So by the logic of our elite, we should think that addressing inequality has enormous implications for living standards, even if we can't do anything to boost productivity growth.

The Success of Austerity in Spain: The Soft Bigotry of Incredibly Low Expectations

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 14, 2015

14 Septiembre 2015

Paul Krugman rightly criticizes the proponents of austerity for claiming Spain as a success story. As Krugman points out, its economy is growing, but it has a long way to go to make up the ground lost in its downturn.

He makes this point in a graph showing log GDP, but this picture is actually too generous. We should care about GDP per capita, and here the story is even worse.

Spain’s per capita GDP is still more than 7 percent below its peak in 2007. In fact the current level is roughly the same as in 2003, translating into 11 years of zero growth in per capita GDP. By comparison in 1940, 11 years after the onset of the Great Depression, per capita disposable income was 7 percent higher than its level in 1929.

So with its austerity agenda Spain is doing considerably worse than the United States in its recovery from the Great Depression. Apparently, this now counts at success among the honchos in the euro zone.

Paul Krugman rightly criticizes the proponents of austerity for claiming Spain as a success story. As Krugman points out, its economy is growing, but it has a long way to go to make up the ground lost in its downturn.

He makes this point in a graph showing log GDP, but this picture is actually too generous. We should care about GDP per capita, and here the story is even worse.

Spain’s per capita GDP is still more than 7 percent below its peak in 2007. In fact the current level is roughly the same as in 2003, translating into 11 years of zero growth in per capita GDP. By comparison in 1940, 11 years after the onset of the Great Depression, per capita disposable income was 7 percent higher than its level in 1929.

So with its austerity agenda Spain is doing considerably worse than the United States in its recovery from the Great Depression. Apparently, this now counts at success among the honchos in the euro zone.

Grading the Bush Tax Cut Proposal

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 14, 2015

14 Septiembre 2015

Josh Barro had an interesting piece where he asked several prominent public finance economists for their assessment of the growth impact of the tax cuts put forward by Jeb Bush as part of his presidential campaign. Barro noted a wide range of opinions, with some expecting little impact and others arguing that it would have a large positive impact on growth.

One of the people in the latter category was Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff. According to Barro:

“He thought the Bush plan, especially its provision allowing companies to fully and immediately deduct capital expenses from their taxes, would have large and swift economic effects. He said he thought the plan would grow the economy by more than 5 percent, and he thought most of those effects would be felt within the first decade, pointing to Ireland as an example of a country that experienced rapid economic growth after cutting corporate income taxes.”

It’s interesting that Kotlikoff would seize on the expensing provisions for new investment as being especially important for boosting growth. President Obama actually included expensing of capital investment as part of his stimulus package. He originally continued a limited 50 percent expensing provision that had been part of President Bush’s 2008 stimulus package. He then expanded this in 2010 to a full expensing provision for 2011 and 2012.

While equipment investment grew at a 12.2 healthy pace in these years, that is not especially impressive since it was still recovering from a drop of nearly 30 percent in 2008 and 2009. By comparison, in the years 2004–2006, equipment investment grew at an 8.6 percent annual rate. This was in the absence of any comparable tax provision and no remotely comparable recession falloff from which to recover. (In 2012, equipment investment was 4.6 percent above the pre-recession peak in 2007. By comparison, in 2006 it was 19.9 percent higher than its 2000 peak.)

It is also worth noting that a temporary credit is likely to provide more of a boost than a permanent credit. Firms have a strong incentive to move their investment plans forward to take advantage of a temporary tax credit. This incentive would not exist with a permanent credit. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the boost to investment we saw from changing the tax provision for new investment in 2011-2012 would be larger than the boost we would receive from permanently changing the provision, as Jeb Bush has proposed.

Note: Typos and dates corrected.

Josh Barro had an interesting piece where he asked several prominent public finance economists for their assessment of the growth impact of the tax cuts put forward by Jeb Bush as part of his presidential campaign. Barro noted a wide range of opinions, with some expecting little impact and others arguing that it would have a large positive impact on growth.

One of the people in the latter category was Boston University economist Larry Kotlikoff. According to Barro:

“He thought the Bush plan, especially its provision allowing companies to fully and immediately deduct capital expenses from their taxes, would have large and swift economic effects. He said he thought the plan would grow the economy by more than 5 percent, and he thought most of those effects would be felt within the first decade, pointing to Ireland as an example of a country that experienced rapid economic growth after cutting corporate income taxes.”

It’s interesting that Kotlikoff would seize on the expensing provisions for new investment as being especially important for boosting growth. President Obama actually included expensing of capital investment as part of his stimulus package. He originally continued a limited 50 percent expensing provision that had been part of President Bush’s 2008 stimulus package. He then expanded this in 2010 to a full expensing provision for 2011 and 2012.

While equipment investment grew at a 12.2 healthy pace in these years, that is not especially impressive since it was still recovering from a drop of nearly 30 percent in 2008 and 2009. By comparison, in the years 2004–2006, equipment investment grew at an 8.6 percent annual rate. This was in the absence of any comparable tax provision and no remotely comparable recession falloff from which to recover. (In 2012, equipment investment was 4.6 percent above the pre-recession peak in 2007. By comparison, in 2006 it was 19.9 percent higher than its 2000 peak.)

It is also worth noting that a temporary credit is likely to provide more of a boost than a permanent credit. Firms have a strong incentive to move their investment plans forward to take advantage of a temporary tax credit. This incentive would not exist with a permanent credit. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the boost to investment we saw from changing the tax provision for new investment in 2011-2012 would be larger than the boost we would receive from permanently changing the provision, as Jeb Bush has proposed.

Note: Typos and dates corrected.

Paul Krugman Carefully Explains Why We Never Had to Worry About the Second Great Depression

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 11, 2015

11 Septiembre 2015

We are approaching the 7th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman. As folks recall, this led to a massive financial crisis, with normal interbank lending freezing up, and most of the country's major banks teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. This was when then chair of the Fed Ben Bernanke, along with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and New York Fed bank president Timothy Geithner, ran to Congress and demanded an immediate bailout of the banks, which was known as the TARP. The alternative was economic collapse. When the House of Representatives shocked the elites by turning down the bailout, in response to a massive outcry against Wall Street across the country, the elites doubled down. Major news outlets like the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Washington Post started telling us that we would see another Great Depression if the banks didn't get their money. The people who questioned this view were mocked as know-nothings (sort of like the people who warned about the housing bubble before it burst). Anyhow, as we all know, the House turned around for a voted for a new bill larded with special interest pork, the banks got trillions of dollars in below market interest loans, explicit government guarantees of trillions more in assets, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's pledge that there would be no more Lehman's, meaning that no matter how badly insolvent a major bank might be, the government would not allow its collapse. As a result, the major banks are all back on the their feet, the Wall Street honchos are richer than ever, and they are again running around telling us how we should run the economy and the country. (That mostly involves giving them more money.)

The Crisis of Too Little Land

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 10, 2015

10 Septiembre 2015

If you have been worried about the demographic crisis leaving us with too few workers or the technological revolution leaving us with too few jobs, my friend Noah Smith now warns us of the crisis of too little land. The problem is that we have too much money going to owners of land, who are not entirely accurately referred to as "landlords" by Noah. There are a few problems with this story. First, the trend for an increasing share of income to go to land owners is less clear than he suggests. In the United States (I know Noah is referring to the OECD as a whole, but if the U.S. can be an exception, it's not a law of capitalism) there was no trend for an increasing share of income going to land owners until the eighties. This makes it at least a shorter term story here than the one dating from the 1950s in Europe. In the U.S. the rise in property values relative to GDP has coincided with a sharp drop in interest rates over this period. This is exactly what we would expect. Land prices rise when interest rates fall, just as the price of a bond or any other asset that provides an annual payout rises. The point is that it is far from clear that we are staring at some inexorable trend. The second point is the logic of ever rising land prices is far from clear. Yes, there are economies of agglomeration, people benefit from clustering in or near cities. But this has always been true. What has changed is the ability to quickly communicate over long distances has increased enormously. The fact that we have the Internet, while not eliminating the benefits of agglomeration, surely has to reduce them.

Getting Serious About Taxes with the Washington Post and Jeb Bush

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 10, 2015

10 Septiembre 2015

The Washington Post began its editorial on Jeb Bush’s tax cut proposal by telling readers, that it is “worth taking seriously.” Most of the rest of the editorial is telling us the opposite. The basic story is that everyone gets a tax cuts, with the biggest savings going to the wealthy. That is projected to reduce revenue by $3.2 trillion over the next decade (@ 1.5 percent of GDP), but the magic growth elixir will get us back $2.0 trillion of this shortfall.

Paul Krugman and others have beaten up on this story (can they really sell this one yet again?), so I’ll just focus on one aspect I find especially annoying. While the proposal will sharply limit deductions for things like catastrophic medical bills and state and local taxes, it allows the deduction for charitable givings to remain unlimited. (Actually, the current cap of 50 percent of adjusted gross income stays in place.)

I have nothing against charities, but we need to look at this one with clear eyes. The presidents and top executives of many non-profits currently get pay in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars. Is it really necessary to subsidize these paychecks with taxpayer dollars?

For example, some hedge fund honcho may give tens of millions of dollars to a foundation that he has created with his college buddy, who runs the show for $2 million a year. Since our hedge funder is in the 43 percent bracket (ignoring their carried interest tax break), taxpayers are effectively picking up $860k of his college buddy’s pay. That’s equal to approximately 500 person-years of food stamps.

Now I want to help struggling foundation presidents as much as the next person, but isn’t there a better use of taxpayer dollars? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that if non-profits are going to enjoy tax subsidies that we get to set some rules, such as a cap on what any of its employees can earn.

The president of the United States gets $400k a year. That seems like a reasonable cap for the president and other employees of non-profits. If they can’t find good help for this wage then maybe they aren’t the sort of organization that deserves the taxpayer’s support.

The Washington Post began its editorial on Jeb Bush’s tax cut proposal by telling readers, that it is “worth taking seriously.” Most of the rest of the editorial is telling us the opposite. The basic story is that everyone gets a tax cuts, with the biggest savings going to the wealthy. That is projected to reduce revenue by $3.2 trillion over the next decade (@ 1.5 percent of GDP), but the magic growth elixir will get us back $2.0 trillion of this shortfall.

Paul Krugman and others have beaten up on this story (can they really sell this one yet again?), so I’ll just focus on one aspect I find especially annoying. While the proposal will sharply limit deductions for things like catastrophic medical bills and state and local taxes, it allows the deduction for charitable givings to remain unlimited. (Actually, the current cap of 50 percent of adjusted gross income stays in place.)

I have nothing against charities, but we need to look at this one with clear eyes. The presidents and top executives of many non-profits currently get pay in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars. Is it really necessary to subsidize these paychecks with taxpayer dollars?

For example, some hedge fund honcho may give tens of millions of dollars to a foundation that he has created with his college buddy, who runs the show for $2 million a year. Since our hedge funder is in the 43 percent bracket (ignoring their carried interest tax break), taxpayers are effectively picking up $860k of his college buddy’s pay. That’s equal to approximately 500 person-years of food stamps.

Now I want to help struggling foundation presidents as much as the next person, but isn’t there a better use of taxpayer dollars? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that if non-profits are going to enjoy tax subsidies that we get to set some rules, such as a cap on what any of its employees can earn.

The president of the United States gets $400k a year. That seems like a reasonable cap for the president and other employees of non-profits. If they can’t find good help for this wage then maybe they aren’t the sort of organization that deserves the taxpayer’s support.

Politicians Don't Always Do What they Say #23,314

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 10, 2015

10 Septiembre 2015

Sorry folks, but sometimes politicians and political figures say things for public consumption, not because they actually reflect reality. This is why reporters should tell us what these figures say, not to assume that what they say reflects the truth.

Therefore, when Attorney General Loretta Lynch sent out a memo saying that the Justice Department would seek criminal prosecutions of individuals in cases of white collar crime, the NYT should have reported that she sent out a memo. It should not have an article headlined, “Justice Department sets sights on Wall Street executives.” Of course the NYT does not know that the Justice Department will actually go through with criminal prosecutions, it just knows that the Attorney General sent out a memo indicating that she wants it to. We will know for sure that this memo accurately reflects policy when we see high level corporate officials indicted for criminal activity.

Thanks to Robert Sadin for calling this one to my attention.

Sorry folks, but sometimes politicians and political figures say things for public consumption, not because they actually reflect reality. This is why reporters should tell us what these figures say, not to assume that what they say reflects the truth.

Therefore, when Attorney General Loretta Lynch sent out a memo saying that the Justice Department would seek criminal prosecutions of individuals in cases of white collar crime, the NYT should have reported that she sent out a memo. It should not have an article headlined, “Justice Department sets sights on Wall Street executives.” Of course the NYT does not know that the Justice Department will actually go through with criminal prosecutions, it just knows that the Attorney General sent out a memo indicating that she wants it to. We will know for sure that this memo accurately reflects policy when we see high level corporate officials indicted for criminal activity.

Thanks to Robert Sadin for calling this one to my attention.

Hold the Celebration on Job Openings

By Dean BakerDean Baker

September 09, 2015

09 Septiembre 2015

The Labor Department released new data this morning on job openings and turnover. The release showed a big jump in openings in July compared with June or July of 2014. In the past this has been taken as evidence of the economy’s strength and also as an indication that employers are having problems get workers with the needed skills.

One problem with this story is that many of the openings are showing up in retail trade and restaurants, which are not areas where we ordinarily think the skill requirements are very high (which does not mean that the work is not difficult). The chart below shows most of the sectors responsible for the jump in openings. The biggest rise is professional and business services, which includes many highly skilled occupations, but also includes temp help and custodians. The point here is that it is not clear what is going on in these markets based on the rise in openings. If employers were really having trouble getting the workers they need then they should be offering higher pay. Thus far, they are not.

Book2 536 image001

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Labor Department released new data this morning on job openings and turnover. The release showed a big jump in openings in July compared with June or July of 2014. In the past this has been taken as evidence of the economy’s strength and also as an indication that employers are having problems get workers with the needed skills.

One problem with this story is that many of the openings are showing up in retail trade and restaurants, which are not areas where we ordinarily think the skill requirements are very high (which does not mean that the work is not difficult). The chart below shows most of the sectors responsible for the jump in openings. The biggest rise is professional and business services, which includes many highly skilled occupations, but also includes temp help and custodians. The point here is that it is not clear what is going on in these markets based on the rise in openings. If employers were really having trouble getting the workers they need then they should be offering higher pay. Thus far, they are not.

Book2 536 image001

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.