Employment

Robert Lucas offers the following as one of his reasons for the persistence of the Great Recession: Likelihood of much higher taxes, focused on the “rich” Gavyn Davies and Paul Krugman argue that the Lucas attempt to explain the persistence of the Great Recession on purely classical principles lacks credibility with Davies noting: As yet, there has been no increase in taxation, on the rich or anyone else. Nor have the Obama administration’s medical and financial sector reforms really taken effect. It would take a remarkably far sighted private sector to have already reacted adversely to this set of long term reforms, even if they might do so eventually. One could argue, however, that the Barro reformulation of Ricardian Equivalence would argue that it is not current taxation that matters but the expectation of future taxes when government spending outstrips taxes. But if one is basing one’s argument thusly, I don’t see what has fundamentally changed in the past few years. We knew ...

Mark Thoma features the “debate” between Brad DeLong and Jim Grant. Brad has a nice summary of this debate. Mark Sadowski in a comment over at Mark’s place alerts us to an interview with Mr. Grant by none other than Lawrence Kudlow : Kudlow: Look, you’ve got some pretty convincing stuff [in Grant’s Observer]. This is the most stimulus we have ever seen. I think what you’re saying is the Fed has poured in 18 percent of GDP. Fiscally, spending and taxing 12 percent of GDP. Those are world records. But this isn’t even the worst downturn. Grant: By the numbers, this is a garden-variety recession. So far, statistically, on the GDP numbers, it is ordinary. What is extraordinary of course is Wall Street’s self-inflicted wounds in credit. However, what is truly momentous is the government’s response. Nothing like it. So there have been 11 recessions/depressions since 1929. On average, the sum of the fiscal and the monetary response as we index them is like 2.9 percent of GDP. A garden-var...