Fl Development Management is Dead
June 4, 2011 Leave a comment
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Ryancare is Not Medicare (Krugman)
June 4, 2011 Leave a comment
Medicare would be gutted by the Ryan proposal–the elderly would get stuck buying their insurance from an uncontrolled cost system: the private insurance companies.
…how does the Ryan plan differ from the Affordable Care Act? After all, in both plans people are supposed to buy coverage from private insurers, with a subsidy from the government.
Well, the answer is that the ACA is specifically designed to ensure that insurance is affordable, whereas Ryancare just hands out vouchers and washes its hands. Specifically, the ACA subsidy system (pdf) sets a maximum percentage of income that families are expected to pay for insurance, on a sliding scale that rises with income. To the extent that the actual cost of a minimum acceptable policy exceeds that percentage of income, subsidies make up the difference.
Ryancare, by contrast, provides a fixed sum — end of story. And because this fixed sum would not grow with rising health care costs, it’s almost guaranteed to fall far short of the actual cost of insurance.
This is also why Ryancare is NOT premium support; it’s a voucher system. No matter how much they say it isn’t, that’s exactly what it is.
US (and Coral Gables) Economy in Real Danger
June 4, 2011 Leave a comment
The unfathomable politics of the US is driving the economy into stagnation at a time when there are more than 20 million people unemployed or poorly employed. Politics is at the worst moment centering current public political warfare on the deficit and the danger of the US bond market coming under attack (I guess from our own financial sector that had been saved by the US government not too long ago). This translate into deepening social welfare declines, a lost generation of professionals graduating and going into professionally demeaning jobs, if any.
We will now see what leadership emerges in this country now that the growth prospects will hurt not only the middle class, but the business and financial class too.
Today’s employment report should be a wake-up call to policymakers who continue to say the budget deficit is a more immediate threat to the economy than the jobs deficit. Nearly two years after the economy technically turned the corner from recession to recovery, job growth was disappointing in May and unemployment remained high. At the same time, interest rates are very low (see chart), indicating that financial markets are far more concerned in the near term about a sluggish recovery than about deficits, debt, or inflation.
The Future for our Economy is Bleak–Deficit Cutting Will Make it Worse
June 3, 2011 Leave a comment
This is first year economics, economics that seems beyond our politicians who are ready to drive us into another recession.
Local governments will have to continue a exercise of austerity, rather than inventing new projects and more borrowing (e.g. city of Coral Gables).
Paul Krugman: The Mistake of 2010
Will we continue to repeat the mistakes of the past?
The Mistake of 2010, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a blog post about the “mistake of 1937,” the premature fiscal and monetary pullback that … prolonged the Great Depression. As Gauti Eggertsson … points out, economic conditions today — with output growing, some prices rising, but unemployment still very high — bear a strong resemblance to those in 1936-37. So are modern policy makers going to make the same mistake?
Mr. Eggertsson says no, that economists now know better. But I disagree. In fact, in important ways we have already repeated the mistake of 1937. Call it the mistake of 2010: a “pivot” away from jobs to other concerns, whose wrongheadedness has been highlighted by recent economic data. …
Back when the original 2009 Obama stimulus was enacted, some of us warned that it was both too small and too short-lived. … By the beginning of 2010, it was already obvious that these concerns had been justified. Yet somehow … it became conventional wisdom that the deficit, not unemployment , was Public Enemy No. 1…
So, here we are, in the middle of 2011. How are things going?
Well, the bond vigilantes continue to exist only in the deficit hawks’ imagination. … And the news has, indeed, been bad. As the stimulus has faded out, so have hopes of strong economic recovery. … So, as I said, we have already repeated a version of the mistake of 1937, withdrawing fiscal support much too early and perpetuating high unemployment.
Yet worse things may soon happen.
On the fiscal side, Republicans are demanding immediate spending cuts as the price of raising the debt limit and avoiding a U.S. default. If this blackmail succeeds, it will put a further drag on an already weak economy.
Meanwhile, a loud chorus is demanding that the Fed … raise interest rates to head off an alleged inflationary threat. As the New York Fed article points out,… underlying inflation remains low. …
So the mistake of 2010 may yet be followed by an even bigger mistake. Even if that doesn’t happen, however, the fact is that the policy response to the crisis was and remains vastly inadequate.
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it; we did, and we are. What we’re experiencing may not be a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s little consolation for the millions of American families suffering from a slump that just goes on and on.
Coral Gables Watch 