It's the Debt Stupid by Steve Roth

It's the Debt Stupid by Steve Roth

If you go further and allow that wages and prices can inflate at different rates (which you must, given recent decades), you have extremely large and changing differentials between price inflation, wage inflation, and (especially) asset-price inflation.

Asset-price inflation?

"Asset price inflation" is not inflation by Noah Smith

DeLong on economic growth

Must-Read: As I say, repeatedly, calling it "populism" is not a good thing—it does not need to clear thinking. Hitherto "populism" has meant one to two things:

Jedediah Purdy on Game of Thrones

Fiery Heaven, Bastard Earth: The Cosmology of “Game of Thrones” by Jedediah Purdy

Making Monetary Policy Great Again by Ryan Avent

Making Monetary Policy Great Again by Ryan Avent

Konczal advice to Dems; Mound on Eisenhower Republicans

The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans by Josh Mound

What the stock market’s rise under Trump should teach Democrats by Mike Koczal

THE CRISIS OF POSITIVE-SUM CAPITALISM by Chris Dillow

THE CRISIS OF POSITIVE-SUM CAPITALISM by Chris Dillow

- With savings low and debt high, households might respond to higher wages by saving more. If so, we’ll not get higher aggregate demand and hence incentives to invest. There’s a warning here from the 70s. One reason why the positive-sum game broke down then was that workers saved increasing proportions of their wages. 

These doubts don’t make me side with neoliberalism. They just make me think that wage-led growth is nothing like sufficient.

Medicare, Medicaid

Medicare:

In 2015, Medicare provided health insurance for over 55 million—46 million people age 65 and older and nine million younger people.[2] On average, Medicare covers about half of the health care charges for those enrolled.

payroll tax. universal, expensive, b/c government doesn't negotiate as in other countries.

"Many look to the Veterans Health Administration as a model of lower cost prescription drug coverage. Since the VHA provides healthcare directly, it maintains its own formulary and negotiates prices with manufacturers. Studies show that the VHA pays dramatically less for drugs than the PDP plans Medicare Part D subsidizes.[138][139] One analysis found that adopting a formulary similar to the VHA’s would save Medicare $14 billion a year (over 10 years the savings would be around $140 billion).[140]"

Medicaid cost, care