Is the United States finally controlling health spending? Few issues loom larger in the economic outlook. For years, spiraling health costs — mainly for Medicare and Medicaid, which serve the elderly and the poor — have consumed a growing share of the federal budget. Meanwhile, ...
FOCUS Symbolic of the debate Americans are not having about government's size and role — the essence of the deficit problem — is the future of farm subsidies. Running $10 billion to $15 billion annually, they don't do much good. For starters, they haven't saved small ...
One fateful question for 2013 is this: What happens to globalization? For decades, growing volumes of cross-border trade and money flows have fueled strong economic growth. But something remarkable is happening; trade and international money flows are slowing and, in some cases, declining. David ...
It was big news last week when the Federal Reserve announced that it wants to maintain its current low-interest rate policy until unemployment, now 7.7 percent, drops to at least 6.5 percent. The Fed was correctly portrayed as favoring job creation over fighting inflation, ...
This is not a good time to be starting out in life. Jobs are scarce, and those that exist often pay unexpectedly low wages. Beginning a family — always stressful and uncertain — is increasingly a stretch. The weak economy begets weak family formation. ...
As a practical matter, the debate over higher taxes is finished. If there's an agreement to avoid the "fiscal cliff," it will almost certainly contain large tax increases mostly or entirely on the wealthy. President Barack Obama defines them as couples with more than $250,000 ...
It is a measure of Mitt Romney's inadequacies as a candidate that he has not been able to turn his latest gaffe — his dismissive reference to the 47 percent of Americans who "are dependent upon government" — into a teachable moment and a ...
President Barack Obama's economic report card is at best mediocre. I'd give him a C+, while acknowledging that presidents usually don't much influence the economy. It's too big and subject to too many complex forces, from new technologies to global conditions. Moreover, policy levers are ...
Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the middle class. At their conventions, the two parties will compete fiercely for its support. Republicans will accuse Barack Obama of destroying the middle class through policies perpetuating high joblessness and feeble ...
Larry Summers knows better. In a column for the Washington Post (which ran Monday in The Japan Times under the headline "The unlikely chance of shrinking government"), the Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and former economic adviser to President Barack Obama shows why ...
