Economic Policy

The Federal Reserve’s crusade against the ghost of inflation has driven unemployment much higher than the official numbers suggest. It’s not technology that’s keeping down wages — it’s the policy of America’s politically insulated central bank.

A consensus seemingly has emerged that the consumer price index exaggerates inflation. But before we change the numbers, we had better look closely at the arguments. They don’t hold up.

When two economists showed that a higher minimum wage would have little adverse effect on jobs, did the fast food industry try to spike the data and poison their reputations?

The International Monetary Fund casts itself as valiant superhero, swooping in to rescue troubled countries from self-inflicted financial disaster. In fact, the demands for austerity it has recently imposed on fundamentally sound economies in Asia and elsewhere have made their problems much worse.

Contrary to the conventional view among economists, the shares of national income going to capital and labor have shifted. Capital’s gain has been labor’s loss.

It would be nice if the Dodgers returned to Brooklyn and if the economy grew faster than 2.3 percent. But neither of these things is in the offing.

America’s high bankruptcy rates suggest the recent economic boom is less than it appears. Changing bankruptcy law, which is what Republicans in Congress are threatening to do, won’t help.

A reply to Robert Kuttner, “Peddling Krugman,” September-October 1996.

Supply-siders point to economic growth during the 1980s as a vindication of Reaganomics. But adjusting for the business cycle shows that the real rate of productivity growth has been the same over the past three decades.

Champions of the U.S. economic system say that Europe’s generous social protections cause high unemployment. But it’s the global economy that’s driving up joblessness in Europe–just as it increases income inequality in the United States.