Labor force participation is a frequent topic of conversation on the radio these days so it seemed appropriate to actually share the graphs that I often show JT when the topic comes up.Â
Labor Force Participation Discussions
Refugee Impact: FocusEconomics Post
This is an active question in much of the United States and North Dakota right now. The answer is elusive and this recent post on FocusEconomics by Oliver Wright makes that abundantly clear.
Posting can resume
Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I was prepping testimony to the state legislative committee looking at the revenue forecasting process in the state of North Dakota. That took a bunch of my time, as did the usual chair work and the like. I gave that testimony today so I will return to my rants and musings about all things economic, including sharing my thoughts about the forecasting of state variables (likely expand beyond my testimony) and my outlook for the state’s key economic variables.
“Permanent” v. “Temporary” Tax Changes
Paul Ryan is pressing hard for tax changes to be permanent rather than temporary (see a representative article here). From a traditional economic perspective he is probably right to do so if he wants policy to have maximum impact on the economy, regardless of your preferred performance metric. There exists no shortage of empirical research on this topic and I include a link here to a research note that seems typical (and more importantly is not paywalled).
Newsflash:Economic Policy is Hard
I am paraphrasing our President in the title obviously. At the point of making too much of a political observation, the President’s comments about insurance could be expanded into many other areas so I cut to the chase and suggest the larger lesson learned should be economic policy in general is not easy.