fiscal policy and NGDP policy

Monetary Policy in a Low R-star World by John C. Williams

Nominal Demand Ain't What It Used to Be by David Beckworth

A Thought Provoking Essay from Fed President William by Larry Summers

Slow Learners by Krugman

Van Jones on Hillary's challenges

Van Jones on the staggering political challenges Hillary Clinton would face as president

Infrastructure, Cassidy and Krugman

AN INFRASTRUCTURE PROPOSAL THAT GOES BEYOND CLINTON AND TRUMP by John Cassidy

Wisdom, Courage and the Economy by Krugman

Now, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try. I’d argue, in particular, for substantially more infrastructure spending than Mrs. Clinton is currently proposing, and more borrowing to pay for it. This might significantly boost growth....

Beckworth and Bernstein comment on Williams's NGDP targettting comments

The dollar’s makin’ me holler, and other tales of the macro muddle by Jared Bernstein

Nominal Demand Ain't What It Used to Be by David Beckworth

Trump voters and economic anxiety, Kwak and DeLong

That “Massive New Study” Says Nothing About Economic Anxiety by James Kwak

Must-Read: Martin Sandbu: Trump Supporters on the Couch:
by DeLong

Economic anxiety can make voters more prone to racial resentment... 

It is, of course, an old trope in social thinking that economic pressure makes it easier to wind masses up against a scapegoated group perceived as “other”. Conversely, times of widespread and rising prosperity are good for liberalism and tolerance. Brad DeLong is quite right that this is a good time to pick up Ben Friedman’s prescient pre-crisis work on the moral consequences of economic growth.... 

Racial status anxiety and economic anxiety can be one and the same phenomenon, insofar as the economic pressure is perceived as affecting a particular social group. Much is said, all correct, about how the American white working class, and Trump supporters in particular, are well off compared with minorities and the real poor. But over the past generation, the trajectory of the white working class has no doubt changed the most for the worse, compared with the previous generation. 

That is true in material, indeed plain physical, terms: while black mortality rates remain higher than those of whites, it’s only for the white working class that the secular mortality decline has gone into reverse. And it is surely true that, as a result, the relative social status of working-class whites has fallen noticeably. That reflects a sharpening of class difference with widening inequality and an unequivocally welcome reduction in racial status difference. 

All told, that is a story of tremendous progress. But there is no need to dismiss the economic roots of the racial backlash we now see...

the decline of unions and Trump

The Decline of Unions and the Rise of Trump by Neil Gross

For millennial voters, the Clinton vs. Trump choice ‘feels like a joke’ by Philip Rucker