It is a common mistake to overestimate the contribution of immigration to the increase in poverty. Today’s purveyor of this erroneous association is the WaPo’s Robert Samuelson, who writes in the context of a discussion about immigration reform:
Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy
In 2009, Ford brought its new supermini, the Fiesta, over from Europe in a brave attempt to attract the attention of young Americans. It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it.
Young bloggers loved the car. Young drivers? Not so much. After a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 18 months, Fiesta sales plummeted. As of April 2012, they were down 30 percent from 2011. Continue reading The Cheapest Generation | The Atlantic
We moved to an apartment complex last month from the condo we’d lived in for the last five years. Continue reading Living the #GreatRecession: Notes from our new digs…
By Jared Bernstein
October 7, 2014
I’ve been looking for an excuse to scratch out a few lines about the connections between full employment, the trade deficit, and dollar policy—connections that understandably don’t jump out at everyone—and I’ve found a particularly good one.
By Jared Bernstein
They’re out and I’ve got an extensive analysis up at PostEverything. For here, some highlights.
–The poverty rate fell more than I expected last year–down half-a-percentage point from 15% in 2012 to 14.5% in 2013. It was fully driven by a sharp decline in child poverty rate, which fell almost two percentage points, from 21.8% to 19.9%, the largest one-year decline since 1966.
By Jared Bernstein
September 15, 2014
Robert Samuelson covers some useful ground this morning, reviewing income and net worth trends from the recent Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial (it comes out every three years) survey of family income and wealth. I wanted to add a few points regarding timing of the trends he cites.
Larry Summers adds concerns about insufficient supply to those about inadequate demand…to which I ask, “why go there?”
Other than supply and demand, the U.S. economy is doing fine.
Continue reading Jared Bernstein: A win-win approach to increase the future labor force
