Shawn Fremstad's blog
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Thu, 09/03/2009 - 12:14
- Steven Greenhouse, Low Wage Workers are Often Cheated, Study Says: "In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay. The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries. “The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”"
- Amy Traub, Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: "In the depths of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Americans have nevertheless rejected the impulse to blame immigrants for their economic woes and instead show strong and growing support for legalizing undocumented immigrants. This report was written to encourage a new immigration reform package driven by the needs of the nation’s middle class and low-income American workers striving to stay afloat through the economic crisis and earn a middle-class standard of living. We reveal that the American middle class relies on the economic contributions of immigrants both authorized and undocumented, but also that the exploitation of undocumented immigrant workers threatens to drive labor standards down for current and aspiring middle-class workers. Based on these findings, we propose a two-fold litmus test for evaluating immigration policy: "
- Paul Krugman, A Couple of Notes on the 40s and 50s: "Many commenters on my 1945 post have raised two objections: (1) didn’t rapid population growth make it easier to deal with debt? (2) didn’t the fact that the rest of the world was in ruins help? Let me explain why both objections are off point. On (1), I think people are collapsing their history, projecting back to the 40s and 50s things that didn’t actually happen until much later. Thus, there was indeed a baby boom after the war, which led to a rapid rise in the population. However, the baby boomers didn’t enter the work force for a couple of decades! Their impact on economic growth didn’t begin until the late 1960s, long after debt levels had fallen a long way. And the great surge of women into the paid labor force was also a much later event. Rosie the Riveter basically went back to being a housewife; it was her daughter who became an office worker. You can see all this in the labor force data. The US labor force (defined as those working or looking for work) rose only 13 percent from 1947 to 1957. It didn’t really take off until the 70s: the labor force grew 30 percent from 1969 to 1979. The point is that our ability to deal with WWII debt had nothing to do with unusually favorable demography."
- Paul Rosenberg, Lind Still Muddled in Trying to Make an Important Point: "Lind attacks the notion that the party can survive by effectively marginalizing the core economic concerns of its traditionally working-class base. On this point, Lind and I are in complete agreement, no questions asked. ... That said, if we want to change the Democratic Party, so that it truly represents those that it should represent, then we need an analysis that gets the problem right, not just in its broad sweep, but also in its breakdown into actionable chunks. And this is where my problems with Lind come to the fore. As before, Lind is confused over the fact that minorities are disproportionately more working class than whites--as, too, are women. ... And as I've noted before, the Democrats are not losing the white working class-at least in terms of party identification. Rightwing populism-most recently in the form of Tea-Baggers, Birthers and Deathers-may hold some appeal for them, but its centered higher up the income scale, ..."
- Cynthia Tucker, 'Political Brain' Author: Obama Sounds Like Dukakis: "Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain,” is among those liberal supporters who are disappointed in President Obama’s performance in the health care debate. In an interview this week, Westen criticized the president for failing to use voters’ populist anger to promote support for health care reform and other planks of his domestic platform.
Westen cited Obama’s aversion to partisan combat as one of the reasons that his policies have lost popular appeal. “In the context of the anxiety and anger people have had about the economy and losing their jobs and losing their homes, or worrying about those things, they were looking for some place to turn that anxiety and anger. And because the president has been so steadfast in his refusal to point fingers at anyone, the Republicans have jumped into the breach and said, ‘if you are not going to mobilize that anger, we are.’ “It’s remarkable that a new president gets elected with super-majorities, that the president wouldn’t use people’s legitimate anger as a tool for change, when he ran on change,” Westen said."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Fri, 08/28/2009 - 22:39
- Jonathan Cohn, Liberalism's Torch Bearer: "On cable television and in town halls, conservatives rail against health care reform as an unconscionable infringement on liberty--an effort, literally, to snuff out the sick, the elderly, and the veterans of foreign wars. Liberals have countered with numbers, legislative histories--in short, we've made appeals to logic. But appeals to morality? They've been few and far between. We've approached health care reform as a problem to solve--which, surely, it is. We've not approached it as an obligation to fulfill--which, surely, it is as well. [Ted] Kennedy rarely made that mistake. When he looked at America, he saw a country full of people made vulnerable--by circumstance of birth, economic misfortune, illness, or injury. Some were middle-class; some were poor. In either case, he believed, we had an obligation, as a nation, to protect them--if not to render them whole, then at least to make them safe. And so he spoke out-- for universal health care, for civil rights, for aid to people with disabilities, for more generous assistance to the poor. And when opponents criticized those moves, because they meant bigger government or bigger taxes, Kennedy didn't deny the charge. He justified it, in a way few Democrats would dare do today. It was, he said, the way Americans fulfill their duty to one another."
- Greg Mankiw Hearts Genetic Determinism: "... you might think Mankiw would at least nod his head in the direction of omitted variables that are correlated with income and with SAT scores, but have nothing to do with genes. Like, I dunno, the quality of primary and secondary education, which could — and let me go out on a limb here — be a bit more sucky in poor neighborhoods than rich neighborhoods. Or, maybe, and again, this is just crazy speculation, rich parents do more to prepare their children for standardized tests. That’s what I would do if I were writing a blithe little blog post. You know, hedge my bets. If I wanted to work hard, I would type “adopted children sat scores family income” into Google, and then I would learn just how difficult it is to separate out the effects of genes and the environment, even when you look at adopted children ...."
- Howard Gleckman, Trillion Dollar Health Reform, $3 Trillion in Tax Cuts: "It is interesting, and perhaps worth noting, that while political opposition seems to be hardening against the $1 trillion, ten-year cost of the early versions of health reform, barely a peep of concern has been raised about the $3 trillion price tag for President Obama’s plan to extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts. The message seems pretty clear: The President, congressional Democrats, and nearly all Republicans are fine with busting the budget to cut taxes for nearly everyone, notwithstanding a cumulative deficit over the next decade of $9 trillion. They are, by contrast, unwilling to spend one-third as much to provide medical insurance for those who cannot afford it. I’ve always felt that health reform is as much an ethical choice as an economic one. We appear to be making ours."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Tue, 08/25/2009 - 22:29
- Tom Jacobs, Five Words in and You're Decided: "According to a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Science, the brain takes a mere quarter of a second to react to statements that contradict or challenge our ethical belief system. That nearly instantaneous neural response colors the way the rest of the sentence — and thus, the rest of the thought — is interpreted. ... 'The first word indicating that a statement clashes with the reader's value system elicits a very rapid and characteristic neural response,' the researchers write. They add that 'strong disagreement rapidly influences the ongoing analysis of meaning.'"
- Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Free Markets and Government Intervention: "I am a fierce proponent of free markets. Therefore I am a fierce proponent of government intervention in the market. Or, to put things less inflamatorily, one thing that often bothers me about US defenders of free markets is how easily they (and we) forget that free markets are created, maintained and curated by, well, the government. Free market conservatives often behave as if free markets are like a state of nature in which ham-fisted government arrives after the fact and wrecks everything when, in fact, it is the opposite. In a state of nature, you have permanent war. Traders and entrepreneurs can only exist once you have a Leviathan to enforce things like private property, money and contracts — all things created and maintained by the State. The rules of the market are set by the State. And if the State doesn’t intervene — justly — in the markets, you cannot have a free market."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 09:29
- Daniel Hamermesh, Grazing, Goods and Girth: Determinants and Effects: "Using the 2006-07 American Time Use Survey and its Eating and Health Module, I show that over half of adult Americans report grazing (secondary eating/drinking) on a typical day, with grazing time almost equaling primary eating/drinking time. An economic model predicts that higher wage rates (price of time) will lead to substitution of grazing for primary eating/drinking, especially by raising the number of grazing incidents relative to meals. This prediction is confirmed in these data. Eating meals more frequently is associated with lower BMI and better self-reported health, as is grazing more frequently. Food purchases are positively related to time spent eating—substitution of goods for time is difficult—but are lower when eating time is spread over more meals."
- Dean Baker, Robert Samuelson Doesn't Like Trains: "Samuelson tries to tell us that trains might be useful in Japan and Europe, but they won't work in the United States. He tells readers that: "Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile." The density for the United States as a whole would be relevant if the plans were to build a train network going from Florida to Alaska, but that is not what is on the agenda. Instead, the issue is about deepening and improving the network in relatively densely populated parts of the country, like Ohio (277 people per square mile), New York (402), and New Jersey (1134). The population densities of much of the United States are very comparable to the regions in Europe through which high speed rails travel."
- Robert Pear, Senate Democrats Consider Tactic to Push Through Government Health Plan: "Senate Democrats said Sunday that they were fleshing out plans to pass health legislation, particularly the option of a new government-run insurance program, with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes that would ordinarily be needed to overcome a filibuster. After consulting experts in Senate rules and procedure, the Democrats said they were increasingly confident that they could legislate creation of a public plan in a way that would withstand challenges expected from Republicans."
- Conor Friedersdorf, Age of the IPhone: "What I am hoping — I’m stealing this insight from a conversation, but I don’t remember who I had it with — is that Yelp plus smart phones, and other similar applications, will tip the competitive balance away from chain restaurants and toward exceptional independent eateries, bars and coffee shops. The uncertainty that is a cost of trying these establishments is growing ever lower with crowd-sourced ratings and reviews that are readily accessible even in neighborhoods far from where one lives. There is some lost fun finding hidden gems oneself, but I nevertheless welcome my new Yelp overlords."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Mon, 08/17/2009 - 09:31
- Business Week, A Different Kind of Credit Card Company: "The Service Employees International Union has frequently blasted credit-card issuers over the years for abusive lending practices. When the SEIU started searching for a firm to create a branded card for its 2 million members, union leaders demanded fewer fees and less onerous penalties. "We wanted a card that was more consumer-friendly," says Jeremy Smith, a deputy director at the SEIU. "[Most] card companies wouldn't consider our proposal." Hal Erskine, the founder and president of PartnersFirst, did. In April his Wilmington (Del.) financial firm introduced an SEIU credit card that met the union's tough standards. The card, which has an average interest rate of 16%, doesn't levy annual fees or impose late-payment charges. And PartnersFirst won't hike rates or change terms without the SEIU's permission."
- Pierre-Carl Michaud and others, International Differences in Longevity and Health and their Economic Consequences: "In 1975, 50 year-old Americans could expect to live slightly longer than their European counterparts. By 2005, American life expectancy at that age has diverged substantially compared to Europe. We find that this growing longevity gap is primarily the symptom of real declines in the health of near-elderly Americans, relative to their European peers. In particular, we use a microsimulation approach to project what US longevity would look like, if US health trends approximated those in Europe. We find that differences in health can explain most of the growing gap in remaining life expectancy. In addition, we quantify the public finance consequences of this deterioration in health. The model predicts that gradually moving American cohorts to the health status enjoyed by Europeans could save up to $1.1 trillion in discounted total health expenditures from 2004 to 2050."
- Felix Salmon, Ben Stein Finally Expelled from NY Times: "You’ll forgive me if I take some small measure of credit for this one: after something in the region of 35,000 words of the Ben Stein Watch, the world’s worst financial columnist has finally been fired from the New York Times. And I couldn’t be happier. The reason was his appearance in commercials for (and on the homepage of) freescore.com, a sleazy company which exists only to extract large sums of money from those who can least afford it."
- Marion Nestle, Let the School-Meals Revolution Begin: "Our present [school-meals] system requires a hugely expensive local and national bureaucracy expressly devoted to preventing kids who are deemed ineligible from getting free or reduced-price meals in schools. This ugly system stigmatizes poor kids .... Why not just say that we think all kids should be fed breakfast and lunch while they are in school? Doing this would allow that bureaucratic waste to be applied to the meals themselves, making it easier for the "dinner ladies" to obtain better food and be paid decent wages."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Thu, 08/06/2009 - 09:38
- Arul Menezes, Microsoft Millionaire: Why I Should Pay More Taxes (via Too Much): "I could choose to tell my story this way: “I arrived with $250 in my pocket, and got where I am based entirely on my hard work.” This is true, but it’s not the whole truth. A more honest reckoning would take into consideration that I received an excellent engineering education paid for by the taxpayers of India, and that my graduate education at Stanford was funded by National Science Foundation grants and other U.S. government investments in scientific research. My professional success — and that of the technology industry as a whole — was enabled, in part, by the advent of the Internet, itself a creation of public investments in research and development and by the available pool of talent, trained and nurtured by our public education system. A more accurate telling of my story would consider that every day I benefit from schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, parks and civic amenities that were built and paid for by previous generations. They were much less well off than we are today. Yet they had the collective will to invest in their future and the future of their children."
- Harold Pollack, Rallying: "On Tuesday afternoon I attended a health reform rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza. ... Twenty or thirty counter-protesters were gathered across the street. ... One man carried a sign that on one side read, “Traitor Rats.” The other side showed a picture of President Obama with a hammer and sickle. Some beefy guys were shouting “USA, USA.” It was surprisingly creepy. I talked with one retired vet carrying a sign that read, “Drop dead, I’m not paying for your health care.” I asked what he meant by that. He said, simply, “I should not have to pay for your medical care.” I asked him if he applies that standard to Medicare. Yes he does. I asked if he therefore feels guilty using the program. “I use the VA.”"
- Orsetta Causa and Asa Johansson, Intergenerational Social Mobility (OECD Working Paper: "Low mobility across generations, as measured by a close link between parent’s and children’s earnings, is particularly pronounced in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States and France, while mobility is higher in the Nordic countries, Australia and Canada. ... Labour market institutions which tend to compress wage distributions, such as a higher degree of unionisation and a greater coverage of collective wage agreements, appear to be associated with a looser link between parental educational achievement and children’s wages. .... More progressive income taxation and higher short-term unemployment benefits are associated with a looser link between parental background and both teenager’s cognitive skills and wages."
- Timothy Egan, Clunker Class War: "They hate [Cash for Clunkers], many of these Republicans, because it’s a huge hit. It’s working as planned, and this cannot stand. America must fail in order for President Obama to fail. Don’t be surprised if the tea party goons now being dispatched to shout down town hall forums on health care start showing up at your car dealers, megaphones in hand. But there’s another reason, less spoken of, for why some people get so incensed over little old Cash for Clunkers: it helps average people, and it’s easily understood — a rare combination in a town where the big money deals usually go down with packaged obfuscation."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Tue, 08/04/2009 - 12:07
- Robert Frank, Nickel and Dimed: Books About Wal-Mart: "It is no accident, [Bethany Moreton] argues, that Wal-Mart emerged in the Ozarks, a stronghold of fundamentalist Christianity that was one of the last regions of the American economy to shift from farming to other pursuits. Many farm women actually preferred the part-time jobs with flexible hours that Wal-Mart offered, even though such jobs were exempt from many regulations. Many of these women, after all, were still trying to help their husbands eke out a living on their farms, and flexible work made it easier for them to care for their children. Economists have long recognized the attractions of flexible working arrangements to some segments of the labor force. But Moreton also offers more novel observations about the lure of Wal-Mart. She explains, for example, how the company invoked the fundamentalist Christian teachings embraced by many of its employees to fashion a working environment that induced them to work contentedly for low wages and paltry benefits."
- Torben Andersen and others, The Nordic Model: Embracing Globalization and Sharing Risks: "The Nordic model is widely regarded as a benchmark. A number of comparative studies of economic and social performance have ranked the Nordics high. A common finding of cross-country comparisons is that the Nordics succeed better than other countries in combining economic efficiency and growth with a peaceful labour market, a fair distribution of income and social cohesion. The model is pointed to as a source of inspiration for other people in their search for a better social and economic system. ... The Nordics have been embracing both globalization and the welfare state, and we argue that the security offered by collective mechanisms for sharing risks has been instrumental in enhancing a favourable attitude to globalization and competition. This key characteristic of the model must be preserved – in order to maintain an economic and social climate which is conducive to future welfare and growth. Collective risk sharing should continue to offer a safety net which helps workers and their families to cope with risks and to adapt to new requirements in times of change."
- NY Times, Oysters Are on the Rebound in the Chesapeake Bay: "After decades of overharvesting of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and many fruitless efforts to replenish them, scientists have re-established a significant population of the shellfish along the Virginia shore. Researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary say that large experimental reefs created five years ago are now home to more than 180 million native oysters. That is still a far cry from the late 1880s, when the bay held billions of the oysters, Crassostrea virginica, and watermen harvested about 25 million bushels annually. But more larvae have been settling on the new reefs every year, the researchers said."
- Jonathan Cohn, The Guns of August: "... groups on the left are better organized--far better organized--than they were last time around, when President Bill Clinton tried to pass reform and found himself fighting that battle almost alone. Labor unions and groups like Health Care for America Now have both money and a plan for getting out their own message. The old Obama campaign machine, now called Organizing for America, is also kicking into gear. This will be its first (and, if unsuccessful, perhaps its last) test as an apparatus that can pass legislation as well as elect a president. What’s not clear is whether these organizations will send the right message. Right now, the energy on the left is all about securing support for a public insurance option. I’m a strong supporter of a public option, but, as I’ve written before, it’s not the sine que non of reform that many of my fellow liberals think it is. If the left makes August all about the public option, I fear they will lose the fight over everything else. I don't pretend to be 100 percent certain about that judgment; I know a lot more about policy than strategy. (That's why I will spend most of my time for the next few weeks focusing on the former.) But I also know I'm not the only one on the left who worries about this--or who worries that, more generally, the left just isn't up for this fight, whether because they're ambivalent about the measures moving through Congress or just ambivalent period. As one liberal operative in Washington asked me recently, "Do they understand what is at stake? ... Do they get that recess isn't about improving the Senate Finance bill but about getting a bill at all?""
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 08:25
- Ben Adler, Should Disability Funding be Part of Health Reform?: "On July 21 the president also announced the U.S. will sign on to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. So why are disability activists in an uproar? Instead of celebrating Obama's announcement, on July 21 a coalition of disability-rights organizations held 26 simultaneous protests at the DNC headquarters, local Democratic Party offices, and at Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus' state office in Missoula, Montana. In April, 400 activists chained themselves to the White House fence and were arrested for civil disobedience. Why do they say they are being ignored, and even that they are victims of political discrimination? Because, like other key progressive constituencies, such as gay-rights and reproductive-rights advocates, disability-rights groups are watching long-awaited priorities be delayed as the president and Congress focus on the economy, climate-change legislation, and health reform."
- Steven Kelts, The Dealth of Libertarianism, Part 3: "... James Madison was not the small-government, absolute-property-rights, pro-capitalist thinker that our Founders are sometimes made out to be. And considering his own words on the subject might allow us to consider some of the ways in which his ideal of freedom if preferable to the wholly-new, 20th Century ideology of libertarianism."
- Brad Plumer, The Case for a Four Day Workweek: "How often does Utah, of all places, get mentioned as a hotbed of public-policy innovation? Not often. But, last August, the state carried out a rather novel idea: Shift all government employees to a four-day workweek. No, this wasn't the French approach. Workers would still put in their 40 hours; they'd just toil in the office for ten hours a day, Monday through Thursday, and then get Friday off. The experiment's been going on for a year and the results are finally in—the state actually saved a fair bit on energy costs."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 16:20
- Brian Corbin, Religion, Workers, and the Economy: Caritas in Veritate: "Since the publication of Rerum Novarum in 1891, Catholic social teachings have provided moral and ethical guideposts for economic behavior. Of particular importance, have been the Papal Encyclicals on the economy that have sought to protect the working class and their institutions in the face of unfettered capitalism. In Pope Benedict XVI’s recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the Church goes a step further by providing a critical analysis of neoliberal economic thought and the problems of globalization while reiterating the need for basic protections for workers and unions."
- Gareth Myles, Economic Growth and the Role of Taxation: "Empirical evidence for the hypothesis that the level of taxation affects economic growth is very weak. This applies both when measures of the average rate of tax are used in the regression and when measures of the marginal rate of tax are used."
- Jacob Hacker, Health Care for the Blue Dogs: "... the Blue Dogs have mostly ignored the huge benefits of a new public plan for their districts. They have also largely ignored the disproportionate benefits promised by new federal subsidies for low- and medium-income workers. Right now, large swaths of farmers, ranchers and self-employed workers can barely afford a policy in the individual market or are uninsured. They will benefit greatly from the premium assistance in the House legislation promised for workers whose earnings are up to 400 percent of the poverty line, from additional subsidies for small businesses to cover their workers, and from a new national purchasing pool, or "exchange," giving those employers access to low-cost group health insurance that's now out of reach."
Submitted by Shawn Fremstad on Mon, 07/27/2009 - 10:32
- John Quiggin, The American Puzzle (Review of The Spirit Level): "In The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett build on Marmot’s work and other statistical evidence to produce a comprehensive case for the proposition that inequalities in income and status have far-reaching and damaging effects on a wide range of measures of social wellbeing, effects that are felt even by those who are relatively high in the income distributions. .... The United States is the obvious outlier in almost all studies of this kind. It is the wealthiest country in the world, the most unequal of the rich countries, and the poorest performer on a wide range of measures of social wellbeing, from life expectancy to serious crime, and even on such objective measures as average height. In some cases, the poor performance primarily reflects the continuing black–white divide. In other cases, however, all but the very richest groups of Americans have worse average outcomes than people with a comparable position in the income distribution in more equal countries, even though the average income of the non-Americans in these groups is much lower than that of the corresponding Americans. We are left with a puzzle. Clearly, something has gone badly wrong in the development of the US social system, and other countries would be well advised not to emulate these failings. But the exact pattern of relationships remains unclear. The best option seems to be to promote equality and social solidarity in as many dimensions as possible. "
- Dean Baker, On the Economy, The Post's Copyeditors Cut Out True Statements: "[David] Ignatius tells readers that the go go economy of the last three decades appears to be at an end and we are now entering a period of slow growth, which he compares to the fifties and sixties. Okay, this is close to loon tune. The three decades following World World II were the period of most rapid growth in the history of the country. Productivity growth, economists' standard measure of an economy's dynamism, was almost 3 percent a year during this period. It fell to 1.5 percent in the mid-seventies and stayed there until the mid-nineties. There was a productivity upturn in the 90s, but adjusted for items like a growing depreciation share in output and some index number issues, productivity growth as it relates to living standards was still a full percentage point lower than Ignatius's slow growth period. Even Ignatius's story about bad stock returns in this period doesn't hold water. Real stock prices grew at close to a 7 percent annual rate from 1949-1969 (real stock prices fell almost 20 percent in 1970). This gain coupled with a dividend yield that averaged 3,2 percent, provided an average real annual return in the stock market of more than 10 percent."
- Dana Goldstein, The Latest Marriage Dust-Up: "The risk of divorce falls for couples who marry later in the life. It falls for couples who are college-educated. And healthier marriages are better for children -- socially, academically, and economically. Public policy should be encouraging later marriages and somewhat later childbearing. It's elementary."
- Paul Krugman, Morning Joe: "A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is … bring back the Rubin team. Even the advisory council, which is supposed to bring in skeptical views, does so by bringing in, um, Marty Feldstein. The point is that even if you think the leftish wing of economics doesn’t have all the answers, you’d expect some people from that wing to be at the table. Yet I don’t see Larry Mishel, or Jamie Galbraith … Jared Bernstein is it. Joe Stiglitz stands out because in addition to being on the progressive wing, he’s also, as I said, a giant among academic economists. "
