Tag Archives: Recession

Can Foundation Giving Relate Better to Society’s Needs Over Time?

Posted on by
Reply

Charitable organizations form a vital part of America’s safety net. Ideally, foundations would be able to make greater payouts in hard economic times when needs are greatest. Unfortunately, the design of today’s excise tax on foundations undermines and in fact discourages such efficiency.

In the recent recession, the impact of the excise tax was especially pernicious, as it penalized those that maintained their level of grantmaking. Continue reading →

Austerity, Stimulus, and Hidden Agendas

Posted on by
Reply

Nothing better exemplifies our gridlock over the future of 21st century government, as well as how to recover from the Great Recession, than the false dichotomy of austerity versus stimulus.

The austerity thesis, reduced to its simplest form, suggests that government has been living beyond its means for some time, only exacerbated by the actions that accompanied the recent economic downturn. Sequesters, tax increases, and spending cuts become the order of the day.

The stimulus hypothesis, reduced also to simplest form, suggests that more government spending and lower taxes puts money in people’s pockets and helps cure a country’s economic doldrums. Once the economy is doing better, government spending will naturally fall and taxes rise.

The debate then plays out largely over deficits: do you want larger or smaller ones? But reduced to this form, the debate is a fallacy, for several reasons. Continue reading →

Homeownership as a Means of Reducing Wealth Disparities

Posted on by
1

A recent paper by Bayer, Ferreira, and Ross on mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures finds that people of color had greater problems once Recession hit than did many others in roughly equal circumstances, such as income and location, but with different racial backgrounds. We believe this is a useful, though not surprising, finding in ongoing studies of the impact of the Recession on different types of households. Yet we worry about how its results get extrapolated into policy recommendations. Continue reading →

Lost Generations? Wealth Building Among the Young

Posted on by
18

The young have been faring poorly in the job market for some time now, a condition only exacerbated by the Great Recession. Now comes disturbing news that they are also falling behind in their share of society’s wealth and their rate of wealth accumulation.

Signe Mary McKernan, Caroline Ratcliffe, Sisi Zhang, and I recently examined how different age groups have shared in the rising net wealth of the U.S. economy. Despite the recent recession, our economy in 2010 was about twice as rich both in terms of average incomes and net worth as it was 27 years earlier in 1983. But not everyone shared equally in that growth. Continue reading →

Declines in Wealth and Declines in Income

Posted on by
1

The press recently had a field day reporting the decline in wealth from 2007 to 2010, as measured by a recently released Survey of Consumer Finances. Be careful interpreting those results. A decline in the valuation of wealth does not necessarily mean any decline in collective well-being or consumption in a society. Continue reading →

Why Economic Growth Isn’t Enough

Posted on by
Reply

Today’s budget problems aren’t America’s first. High debt levels accompanied our major wars, but they were quickly reduced soon after. “Deficits as far as the eye can see” in the mid-1980s were followed briefly by surpluses in the late 1990s. In all these cases, economic growth helped solve the problem. Today, that’s no longer possible.

Failure to understand the causes of today’s historic impasse will stymie those budget reformers tempted to believe we can use the traditional pro-growth strategy to get our fiscal house in order. Most of history is on their side: in almost all past U.S. budgets—indeed, the budgets of most nations—revenues were scheduled to grow automatically along with the economy, and expenditures were scheduled to grow only if there was new legislation. Thus, revenues in some future year would always exceed that past expense, no matter how high any current deficit. But under the laws now dominating the budget, expenditures essentially are or will be growing faster than both revenues and the rest of the economy. In fact, we’re now locked into automatic expenditure hikes that will outstrip revenues under almost any conceivable rate of economic growth. Continue reading →

And Now Something for Our Most Recession-Weary Workers

Posted on by
Reply

With economic recovery from the deep recession in view, a double-headed challenge remains. Reducing the deficit requires cutting back government spending, but we still need to promote employment and work, and that won’t come free. Given this administration’s progressive leanings, its attention to low- and moderate-income workers is surprisingly modest.

So how hard is it to spend less overall but more on lower-income workers? Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan all expanded wage subsidies for some low-wage workers through the earned income tax credit (EITC) while and reforming taxes and significantly lowering the deficit. Continue reading →

Lessons Unlearned? Who Pays for the Next Financial Collapse?

Posted on by
1

It’s an old story. Come a financial collapse, somebody’s got to pay to get the nation’s financial house back in order. While many on Wall Street made millions losing money for their companies, every young American is now saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of additional government debt. While buyers walked away from homes when they went underwater, others who had mustered large down payments simply absorbed their losses—in some cases, wiping out years of saving. While speculators who borrowed to buy stock or real estate shrugged off debt by declaring personal or corporate bankruptcy, those who invested in their 401(k)s helplessly watched their retirement savings erode.

Real loss and suffering run through the country’s financial straits, and so does a profound sense of unfairness. Once the downward spiral started, prudent investors, savers, and reasonable risk-takers got little direct government help, mainly because they were still standing. But their losses were no less real. First, the recession hit their pocketbooks and portfolios. Then many of them lost their jobs or watched friends and families lose theirs. Next, interest rates on their bank deposits fell, while fees on credit cards rose. Continue reading →