John C. Goodman

Update: John Cochrane on Work Incentives

Update: John Cochrane on Work Incentives

When you put all our social programs together, low-income Americans face roughly 100% marginal tax rates. Earn an extra dollar, lose a dollar of benefits. It’s not that simple, of course, with multiple cliffs of infinite tax rates (earn an extra cent, lose a program entirely), and it depends on how many and which programs people sign up for. But the order of magnitude is right. 

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Update: What’s Wrong with the Gabriel

Update: What’s Wrong with the Gabriel

Zucman’s/Emmanuel Saez view of inequality and the case they make for a wealth tax. The American Economics Association has awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark medal to University of California, Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman. At the link you’ll find what the AEA decision makers thought made him deserving.

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Why Are There Drug Shortages?

Why Are There Drug Shortages?

For the past two decades the US has been experiencing shortages of cancer drugs, antibiotics and even saline, a drug potentially needed by almost every patient who gets admitted to the hospital. Nearly all thirty of the most frequently used emergency department drugs experienced shortages from 2006-2019.

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Social Security and Medicare Reform

Social Security and Medicare Reform

To avert financial disaster for our children and grandchildren we need to reform these elderly entitlement programs. Yet reform efforts are easily demagogued by opponents unless they contain real benefits for the current generation of retirees. More.

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How Much Do We Owe?

How Much Do We Owe?

Under current law we have already promised current and future retirees unfunded Social Security and Medicare benefits amounting to $163 trillion in current dollars. That is almost seven times the size of our economy. And of course, all this is “off the table.”  More

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America’s Fiscal Gap

America’s Fiscal Gap

That’s the difference between the federal government’s spending commitments and its income – looking indefinitely into the future. Closing the gap through time requires an immediate and permanent 41.3 percent increase in all federal taxes or an immediate and permanent 35.3 percent cut in all non interest federal spending. More

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Inflation Relief for Seniors

Inflation Relief for Seniors

Senior retirees on fixed incomes are inflation’s worst victims. What can be done?

  • Index the Social Security benefit tax thresholds – so that seniors do not lose more of their benefits because of inflation.
  • Inflation indexed bonds (TIPS) can protect seniors from inflation. We should also protect seniors from higher taxes when inflation causes income from those bonds to rise.
  • Seniors should be able to exchange their non-indexed pensions (which lose value as prices rise) for an inflation-indexed annuity, which rises whenever prices rise.

More from Larry Kotlikoff

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Whatever Happened to the $15 Minimum Wage?

Whatever Happened to the $15 Minimum Wage?

It seems like only yesterday that the $15 minimum wage was high on the agenda of every self-respecting progressive politician, including Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign. The “Fight for 15” was successful in several states and even went statewide in New York and California. So why aren’t we hearing more about the idea these days? It may be because labor markets are working, just like textbook economics say they should. More

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