By James Kwak My new book—Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality—is coming out on January 10 (although, of course, you can pre-order it from your local monopoly now). If you'd like more information about the book, the book website is now up at economism.net. (I used Medium instead of WordPress.com this time.) The post below, which is also the top story on the book website, summarizes the main themes of the book. [ 650 more words ]

http://baselinescenario.com/…/economics-101-economism-and-o…

New post: The Deduction Fairy, on Steven Mnuchin and taxes.

http://baselinescenario.com/2016/11/30/the-deduction-fairy

By James Kwak Several of my friends, some of whom I haven't spoken with in a long time, have reached out to me over the past week to discuss what to make of last week's election. I imagine this is happening with a lot of people. Although I don't have any simple answers, I do have some thoughts on what we can do in response to the prospect of Donald Trump and the Republicans controlling the entire federal government, as well as a large majority of states. [ 1,676 more word ]

http://baselinescenario.com/2016/11/17/what-you-can-do-2

New post: Narratives (and exit polls)

http://baselinescenario.com/2016/11/10/narratives

New post: Let my kids vote!

http://baselinescenario.com/…/the-biggest-voter-suppression…

New post: Models of Economic Policymaking, on Democracy Against Domination by @ksabeelrahman.

http://baselinescenario.com/…/models-of-economic-policymaki…

New post: The Last Chapter Problem, on The Reconnection Agenda by @econjared.

http://baselinescenario.com/…/10/29/the-last-chapter-problem

New post: Time to Vote (in MA); Vote No on 5 (Amherst)

http://baselinescenario.com/2016/10/24/time-to-vote-no-on-5

New post: Ideas, Interests, and the Challenge for Progressives, on @rodrikdani and @rortybomb.

http://baselinescenario.com/…/ideas-interests-and-the-chall…

New post: Structure and Superstructure, on @Noahpinion's latest column (and Karl Marx!)

http://baselinescenario.com/…/…/structure-and-superstructure

New post: Economic Anxiety and the Limits of Data Journalism

http://baselinescenario.com/…/…/you-cant-get-there-from-here

New post: The Problem with Personality Contests

http://baselinescenario.com/…/the-problem-with-personality-…

New post: The Absolutely Best Debate (no moderators, fact checking by the candidates!)

http://baselinescenario.com/…/10/08/the-absolutely-best-deb…

By James Kwak Last week, Council of Economic Advisers chair Jason Furman took to the Washington Post to announce that President Obama has "narrowed the inequality gap." Furman's argument, bolstered by charts and data from a recent CEA report, has won over some of the more perceptive commentators on the Internet, including Derek Thompson, who concludes that Obama "did more to combat than any president in at least 50 years. [ 1,503 more word ]

http://baselinescenario.com/…/is-inequality-rising-or-falli…

New post: This Chart Does Not Say What You Think It Says

http://baselinescenario.com/…/this-chart-does-not-say-what-…