Corporations are people. The revenue generated by a firm ultimately goes to individuals whether in the form of wages or profits that go to the owners of the firm (which, in the case of public companies, are the stockholders). Costs beyond wages for a particular firm are paid to other individuals and firms for supplies, services rendered, etc. This is a basic fact and the reason that one will, at times, hear an economist claim that “corporations don’t pay taxes, people do.”

Republicans are fond of saying that the U.S. doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. They are dead wrong. We have neither a revenue problem, nor a spending problem. The critical issue of the day is that the U.S. has a GROWTH problem.

What will the German bankrolling of the bailouts of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greece do to its own debt problems?

Why should anyone pay attention to what politicians say about job creation? In this case, Ms. Landrieu has been in politics since she was 25 years old; Ms. Murray – after stints as a pre-school teacher and as an environmental and education activist – has been in politics since she was 35. Apparently, the only qualification these women have to pronounce in your pages on the subject of job creation is their success at winning lofty political offices. If the likes of Ms. Landrieu and Ms. Murray were to offer advice on how to repair your collapsed roof or on how to rid your house of termites, they’d be seen immediately for the imposters that they are. But when it comes to economics, politicians’ statements sadly are taken as serious contributions to the public discourse even though … those statements reflect a quality of thinking that would embarrass a twelve-year-old.

it seems to me that the kind of changes necessary to address the long-term structural deficit and debt and the $54 trillion in unfunded liabilities could be quite destabilizing. Of course, a failure to make the necessary reforms could also prove quite destabilizing, as generations are consigned to confiscatory tax levels, stagnant growth, and little hope of prosperity.

Sometime when you’re exhausted by worrying over when the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will go broke, spend a little time worrying about the Disability Insurance trust fund.

In fact, even leaving aside their clear consumer harms, anti-China import policies hurt American companies and workers more than they hurt Chinese companies and workers. Stop for a moment and wrap your heads around that one.

My line these days as that we have Progressive fiscal policy and Tea Party monetary policy, and I wish it were the other way around.