The number of unemployed people available per open job used to be seven; now it's around four.
The growth rate was 2.8 percent, slightly below expectations but an okay boost nevertheless.
Mitt Romney hasn't done anything wrong in paying a low tax rate. What’s wrong is the tax system itself—by favoring investment income, the excessive use of pass-throughs, and subsidizing debt financing.
Obama's SOTU speech called for lawmakers to “build on the momentum we’ve got right now" by creating incentives for manufacturers, skills for workers, jobs in fossil fuel extraction and clean energy innovation, all financed by a fairer tax code.
Mitt Romney is proposing deep spending cuts that would cap federal spending at 20 percent GDP. That means slashing Social Security benefits and pushing 2.6 million additional Americans into poverty.
If the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, the drag to the still-too-weak economy from the reduction in after-tax income would mean less buying power for a lot of families and that would send the unemployment rate back up past 9 percent.
What Romney seems to have meant is that he believes the least-well-off are amply provided for by the safety net. Too bad he wants to shred it.
The trickle-down, de-regulatory agenda presumes that the growth chain starts at the top of the wealth scale and “trickles down” to those at the middle and the bottom of that scale. Problem is, that’s not how it works
Instead of raising taxes, cities and states are balancing their budgets by laying off teachers, cops, maintenance workers. The loss of state and local jobs slows fiscal growth for everyone.
A girl looks through a window of a train parked at a railway station in New Delhi on April 20.
Rick Perry's candidacy failed almost entirely on the weakness of his debate performances, while Newt Gingrich's is thriving on the strength of his. One problem: a good debater doesn't necessarily make a good president.
Romney's 15 percent is the going rate on capital gains and dividends, which is where he gets the bulk of his income (along with many others in the top income brackets).
In September, the president proposed a budget to the supercommittee that included budget cuts meant to please Republicans. Yet some say he failed to "reach across the aisle."
Why hasn’t the president gotten more credit for what history may ultimately judge as a record of remarkable accomplishments?
In today’s America, the president needs to understand the economy measured by middle-class incomes, paychecks, the quantity and quality of jobs, rates of poverty, and income gaps. Romney understand the economy of Wall St., not Main St.
Income inequality is strongly correlated with the inability of the next generation to achieve the American Dream. The more income inequality, the fewer people can achieve the 'Dream.'
Mitt Romney asserted that federal low-income programs are administered so inefficiently that “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.” But administrative costs only count for between 1 and 10 percent of these programs' spending.
Supply side economic practice deepens the deficit and worsens inequality
Business skills might not necessarily fit with government policy, but business people are good for one thing–dealing with other business people
There are several risk factors for the economy this year, but fiscal drag is one that we can avoid with smart policy