Last week, we highlighted that the vast majority of gains in wealth since 1983 accrued to the top 5 percent of households and actually declined for the bottom 60 percent. Perhaps the statistic that best illustrates the disparity is median wealth, which is the wealth of the household that has more wealth than half of households and less than the other half. If gains had been equal from 1983-2009, the typical household’s wealth would have risen to $100,900, up $29,000 from $71,900 in 1983. Instead, median wealth declined 13.5 percent to $62,200.

It is also sobering to examine the racial difference in wealth trends. Wealth for the median black household has nearly disappeared, falling from $6,300 in 1983 to $2,200 in 2009 – a decrease of more than 65 percent. This means half of black households have less than $2,200 in wealth. Among white households, median wealth has fallen substantially since 2007, but at $97,900, remains higher than the 1983 level of $94,100. White median wealth is now 44.5 times higher than black median wealth.

Racial disparities in income and unemployment have been exacerbated by the Great Recession, and the persistent high unemployment ahead of us will do more damage unless we create more jobs now.

As John Irons has already noted, the letter from four leading GOP legislators to the Federal Reserve isn’t just wrong – it’s oh-so-wrong (a jargon-y new economics term).

This post just highlights one of many wrongs – it’s hand-wringing over Fed actions that might “erode the already weakened U.S. dollar.” Weakening the dollar is just what the U.S. economy needs to do to support a real economic recovery. Since the phrase “weak dollar” is a PR disaster, let’s just call it a “competitive dollar,” or even a “lean and mean dollar;” but, whatever you call it, it’s necessary if we want net exports to be a contributor to overall growth rather than a drag.

The figure below shows the contribution of net exports to GDP growth since 2000 – an overvalued dollar has led trade flows to be a consistent drag on growth for pretty much the entire period except for the Great Recession – when spending on everything (including imports) plummeted and led trade to be a stabilizing force.

Click figure to enlarge

So, to recap – the GOP Congress is against fiscal support to the economy, is against monetary support, and thinks a lean and mean dollar is a bad thing. That’s three-for-three in arguing against the only policies we have that can create jobs and lower unemployment in the near-term. It’s going to be a very long election season indeed for Americans looking for work.

Republican leaders in Congress are trying to push the Federal Reserve towards inaction (and simultaneously demonstrating why the Fed was designed to be somewhat independent from Congress) via a stern letter to Chairman Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee. (Read full text below).

In an effort to help my former colleagues at the Fed, I’ve put together some quick pointers to answer the demands from the letter, namely the following:

“Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.”

Obviously, they should feel free to elaborate…

1. “Goals:” To increase the growth rate of GDP, reduce unemployment, and prevent a deflationary spiral that would damage the recovery or create a double-dip recession.

2. “Direction for success:” Not sure what the heck this means. But the theory is that monetary intervention — through an interest rate channel or other — will lead to greater business investment and consumer spending, yielding more demand, higher GDP, and lower unemployment consistent with the overall goals in No. 1.

3. “Ample data proving a case for economic action:” Fourteen million people unemployed and the unemployment rate at 9.1 percent. Zero payroll employment growth in August. A jobs gap of 11 million. GDP growth of 1 percent in 2011Q2; 0.4 percent in 2011Q1. Employment/population at 58 percent. A staggering 4.3 unemployed workers for every job opening. Poverty at 15 percent. Median incomes fell by over $1,000 in 2010, have fallen by over $3,000 since 2007, and are lower than they were in 1997. Shall I go on?

4. “Quantifiable benefits to the American People:” More jobs, higher incomes, lower poverty, more innovation and investments, higher corporate profits, more hot dogs consumed at baseball games, lower mortgage rates. The Fed’s got better macro models, I’ll let them do the actual quantification.

Full text of letter:

Dear Chairman Bernanke,

It is our understanding that the Board Members of the Federal Reserve will meet later this week to consider additional monetary stimulus proposals. We write to express our reservations about any such measures. Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.

It is not clear that the recent round of quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve has facilitated economic growth or reduced the unemployment rate. To the contrary, there has been significant concern expressed by Federal Reserve Board Members, academics, business leaders, Members of Congress and the public. Although the goal of quantitative easing was, in part, to stabilize the price level against deflationary fears, the Federal Reserve’s actions have likely led to more fluctuations and uncertainty in our already weak economy.

We have serious concerns that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy. Such steps may erode the already weakened U.S. dollar or promote more borrowing by overleveraged consumers. To date, we have seen no evidence that further monetary stimulus will create jobs or provide a sustainable path towards economic recovery.

Ultimately, the American economy is driven by the confidence of consumers and investors and the innovations of its workers. The American people have reason to be skeptical of the Federal Reserve vastly increasing its role in the economy if measurable outcomes cannot be demonstrated.

We respectfully request that a copy of this letter be shared with each Member of the Board.

Sincerely,

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Rep. John Boehner, Sen. Jon Kyl, Rep. Eric Cantor

via The GOP’s Startling Bid to Strong-arm the Fed.

While there are numerous job creation proposals that would meaningfully lower unemployment, some lawmakers are pushing counterproductive policies disguised as job creation packages. The proposed repeat of the corporate tax repatriation holiday is one such wolf in sheep’s clothing. The repatriation holiday would allow U.S. multinational companies to return foreign profits at a tax rate of 5.25 percent instead of the 35 percent corporate tax rate, repeating a 2004 corporate tax holiday that failed to produce its intended effects. Today, non-financial U.S. businesses are sitting on over a trillion dollars in cash but still aren’t hiring; increasing aggregate demand, not the supply of corporate cash, is the solution to jobs crisis.

A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details why another repatriation holiday would fail to create jobs, counter-productively push investment and jobs overseas, and add to the long-term budget deficit. Firms used the 2004 tax holiday predominantly to boost share prices, and many of the firms actually laid-off thousands of American workers shortly after repatriating billions of dollars at the lower rate.

Dharmapala, Foley, and Forbes (2009) estimate that every dollar of repatriated foreign earnings was associated with a 92 cent payout in stock repurchases and dividend payments even though these were explicitly prohibited (money is fungible). Inflating the S&P 500 amounts to corporate welfare, not a jobs program.

So why would lawmakers double-down on this failed experiment in corporate tax policy? A recent report by NDN argues that a repatriation holiday will generate $8.7 billion over the next decade. This finding (and the entirety of the report) rejects the Joint Committee on Taxation’s estimate that a second repatriation holiday would result in $78.7 billion of lost revenue over a decade. The NDN report arrives at a different conclusion by stripping out JCT’s behavioral assumptions that (1) repatriation would fall several years after the holiday, and (2) that firms would reorganize, shifting earnings to foreign markets and patiently waiting for the next repatriation holiday.

Regardless of past evidence related to the 2004 repatriation holiday, you cannot extrapolate behavior from a onetime to repeated event. The 2004 repatriation holiday was sold as a one-time-only event. If companies are now led to believe that every 5-8 years they can bring foreign earnings back at a negligibly low tax rate, they would be foolish to repatriate any income at the 35 percent statutory rate. The clear impact of another repatriation holiday would reduce the expected effective tax rate for foreign earnings, inducing companies to shift more operations overseas.

Economists care about moral hazard for a reason. The moral hazard associated with repeating the repatriation holiday—leaps and bounds beyond that of the first holiday—risks decreased investment and employment in the United States while exacerbating long-term budget deficits (the ones that matter). JCT’s behavioral concerns are well founded and cannot be ignored. Consequently, this policy would be bad for employment and bad for the federal budget.

Ellen Schultz’s new book, Retirement Heist, illustrates in lurid detail the failure of the American model that relies on employers to provide “fringe” benefits that may actually be life-or-death necessities. Like Michael Moore’s Sicko, which focused on health insurance shenanigans, Schultz doesn’t focus primarily on the have-nots (in this case, the roughly half of all American workers not covered by any kind of retirement plan), but rather on the erstwhile haves: people who thought they had jobs with good pension and retiree health benefits.

In the postwar decades, the system worked reasonably well for many middle-class workers. But by the Gordon Gekko 1980s, corporations realized they had a lot to gain by reneging on these promises. More precisely, the executives of these companies had a lot to gain, since their compensation was increasingly tied to short-term gains at the expense of the companies’ long-term health and reputation, a connection Schultz doesn’t quite make.

Schultz is one of the best reporters around when it comes to exposing corporate malfeasance, and Retirement Heist, despite its depressing subject matter, is a page-turner. Schultz and her former Wall Street Journal colleague Theo Francis, for example, were behind the “Dead Peasants” story Moore covered in Capitalism, a Love Story. If Capitalism left you wondering how the scam worked (how do companies profit from taking out life insurance policies on their employees?), this and myriad other tactics are detailed in her new book.

Schultz’s muckraking is first rate, but her analysis can occasionally be off. For example, she chastises corporate pension funds for supposedly low-balling rate-of-return projections in the go-go 1990s, when realized returns on pension fund assets were much higher than the 9 percent projections. Later in the book, she zings public funds for doing the opposite, using projections that (while lower than historical returns) are higher than the risk-free Treasury rate. While she’s hardly alone in picking on the public funds, I respectfully disagree.

The Washington Post’s editorial board was quick to rebuke President Obama’s recommendations to the Select Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction for not going far enough:

“The president’s plan would leave the debt at an unhealthy 73 percent of gross domestic product. The Simpson-Bowles plan would reduce that number to 65 percent, a still high but far less troubling level.”

What is driving this debt target of 65 percent, or 60 percent for that matter? Numerology comes to mind, as does austerity for austerity’s sake.

Let’s be clear – addressing the jobs-crisis is the most important near-term necessity – and if doing so drives the debt to greater than 60, 65 or 73 percent of GDP (or any other magical number), that’s fine.

Over the medium-term, stabilizing the trajectory for the debt-to-GDP ratio is a reasonable goal. But, there is no evidence at all that stabilizing it at 73 percent is more dangerous or troubling than any other number. (Click here for wonky footnote).

Reducing public debt-to-GDP by another 8 percentage points in 2021 would reduce annual debt service by roughly 0.3 percentage points of GDP. On the other hand, the steps required to achieve this fiscal contraction will also reduce economic activity in an economy that is years and years away from full employment. In fact, the economic activity suppressed by a fiscal contraction needed to achieve the Post‘s totally arbitrary target by 2021 would see foregone tax revenues and increased safety spending that would surely lead to a more than 0.3 percent of GDP deterioration in the budget. And millions of job-years lost to unemployment.

Our long-term budget blueprint Investing in America’s Economy, as adapted for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s Solutions Initiative, stabilized debt-to-GDP at 77 percent in 2021 and 82 percent by 2035. We thought investing $2.5 trillion over the next decade to put America back to work building a more competitive economy was more important than embracing austerity and targeting an arbitrary debt level. And again, there is no serious evidence that can be brought to bear suggesting that we’re wrong.

***

Footnote: Much of the policy rationale for targeting a lower debt ratio comes from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff’s paper Growth in a Time of Debt, which argues that economic growth becomes hindered when government debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP, but this research fails to identify causality. Slow growth can just as easily account for higher debt accumulation. And as my colleagues John Irons and Josh Bivens explain in this paper, the Reinhart and Rogoff results are inapplicable to the United States because the data sample is entirely sensitive to the post-war demobilization, in which economic contraction was driven by large spending cuts, not contemporaneously high debt. Stripping out 1945 and 1946 from the sample yields 2.8 percent average growth for all other years in which government debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP. (Note: their specification uses gross government debt rather than the more applicable measure—debt held by the public, which dictates market interest rates and any crowding out effects—so the 90 percent threshold isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with the public debt levels discussed above.)

Debt hysteria yanked the national policy focus away from the economic recovery, toward the counterproductive debt ceiling debacle. The policy debate is finally pivoting back to job creation, but it should never have strayed, as is demonstrated by the abysmal 0.7 percent growth in the first half of this year and recent jobs reports. When it is time to think about longer-run fiscal problems, solutions should be informed by actual evidence, not hand-waving about debt targets that sound “troubling” for some ill-defined reason.

And how is the austerity camp faring in Europe? This week’s leader in The Economist finally proclaimed austerity a massive failure: “Sharply cutting budget deficits has been the priority—hence the tax rises and spending cuts. But this collectively huge fiscal contraction is self-defeating. By driving enfeebled countries into recession it only increases worries about both government debts and European banks.” This sounds a lot like Reinhart and Rogoff’s causality reversed. Whoops.

One of the persistent criticisms of President Obama’s fiscal plan is that it counts war spending reductions as savings. Basically, the Congressional Budget Office calculates its defense baseline in part by taking the most recent war supplemental (technically called Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO) and assuming that amount—adjusted for inflation—will be spent each year over the foreseeable horizon. This adds up to about $1.73 trillion over 10 years. The president’s proposal, however, includes only $653 billion in OCO spending over 10 years, for a savings of about $1.1 trillion.

Some critics, however, allege that these savings cannot be counted because the CBO OCO baseline itself isn’t realistic, therefore the savings are not “real.” For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) argues that counting these savings is a “budget gimmick” that the president uses to “inflate his savings.” According to this critique, another baseline for OCO expenditures should be used—either the president’s budget request or the CBO’s drawdown policy option—which would lower the baseline and make it practically impossible to generate budget savings from reducing war spending.

All due respect to CRFB and the other critics, but this criticism is silly. The CBO OCO baseline isn’t “unrealistic”—rather, it represents the costs of President Bush’s aggressive invasion-centered approach to foreign policy extended into perpetuity. President Obama is, thankfully, in the process of trying to change America’s approach to foreign policy, drawing down troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and moving toward a more multilateral, patient, diplomatic, and most importantly, less expensive approach. Furthermore, the fiscal plan proposes to cap OCO spending, thereby making sure those savings are realized.

President Obama’s foreign policy approach costs less money than President Bush’s, and the budget outlook should reflect those savings.

This week, House Republicans are continuing with their repeated criticisms of EPA regulations as a threat to the economy, and are about to vote on legislation calling for a new panel to study the cumulative effect of certain EPA rules and delaying, perhaps indefinitely, the implementation of two key rules. This stonewalling approach is misguided:  the combined costs of the EPA rules advanced by the Obama administration are not a threat to the economy. Once fully in effect:

• The cumulative compliance costs of EPA rules finalized so far during the Obama administration will amount to between 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent of the economy

(Unless otherwise noted, all the findings in this post can be found in my report from last week).

• The cumulative compliance costs of rules finalized or proposed (assuming all rules proposed so far are finalized) by the Obama EPA will amount to between 0.11 percent and 0.15 percent of the economy.

It is entirely implausible that compliance costs that comprise such a small share — about one-one thousandth — of the economy can have a huge effect on the economy’s direction, but that is what EPA opponents have been asserting for some time. The proposition that these rules are a serious concern for the economy is especially unlikely when one considers:

• The rules would yield significant economic benefits — ranging from increased productivity by healthier workers or consumer savings due to greater fuel efficiency — that partly or in some cases fully offset the compliance costs.
• The costs of EPA rules are often overstated by the government itself (see pages 21-23 of this EPI report from April).
• The rules are phased in over several years, facilitating necessary compliance.

While the overall economic effects of these rules will be negligible, the health benefits will be profound, saving tens of thousands of lives and dramatically reducing respiratory diseases and heart attacks. When these health benefits are quantified in dollars, the EPA rules finalized and proposed so far by the Obama administration have net benefits that could exceed $200 billion a year.

To be sure, some important EPA rules may yet be proposed by the Obama administration, and their costs, and their benefits, should also then be considered. But the evidence to date is clear:  the hue and cry over the effect of EPA regulations on the economy is a counterproductive distraction. The lopsided attention to this topic is making it harder for the nation and Congress to focus on the changes in policies that could actually significantly improve the employment situation.

President Obama’s Super Committee proposal makes the case for $1.6 trillion in new revenue from tax reform that would lower tax rates, close loopholes such as the ones that exist for oil and gas companies, roll back the Bush tax cuts for upper-income earners, and restore fairness in the tax code. Included in this package of revenue policies is something the president has dubbed the “Buffett Rule,” which states that people making over $1 million should not pay lower taxes than those in the middle class.

The Buffett rule is less a specific policy and more of a guiding principal, the concept of which could not come at a more appropriate time. While our income tax code includes six marginal tax rate percentages, the highest-income taxpayers often end up paying lower marginal rates than those in the middle class, because 1) tax subsidies tend to disproportionately benefit high-earners, and 2) the rate at which capital gains and dividends are taxed is much lower than the rate at which wage income is taxed. This is why Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

In fact, the highest income households are enjoying some of the lowest taxes in generations. Since 1979, our overall average tax rate has fallen slightly, but for those at the top of the income ladder, the rate has fallen dramatically. While average tax rates went from 22.2 percent of income in 1979 to 20.4 percent of income, for the top 1 percent of households the rate has fallen from 37 percent of income to 29.5 percent of income, a reduction of over a fifth. It’s even more pronounced for the highest income earners: the tax rate for the top 400 households (average income $350 million!) fell from 26.4 percent in 1992 to 16.6 percent 15 years later, a nearly 40 percent reduction.

The diminished tax burden on high income earners has both expanded our deficit and helped make us a more unequal society. The Buffett rule is long overdue.

 Note: Updated figures show that for 2008, the top 400 paid an average tax rate of 18%. This chart reports 2007 numbers because that is the most recent year the Congressional Budget Office offers information for both the top 1% of households and the average tax rate.

President Obama outlined a fairly progressive federal budget proposal for the Super Committee this morning, calling for upfront job creation, more revenue from high-earners, and preserving our commitments to children, the disabled, and the elderly. The proposal represents a balanced and progressive approach that addresses the root causes of our budget deficits, namely the Great Recession, a decade of ineffective and unfair tax cuts, and a decade of unfunded wars. Here’s a quick summary:

— $447 billion for the American Jobs Act
— $1.2 trillion in discretionary cuts (already enacted under the Budget Control Act)
— $1.1 trillion from drawing down troops overseas
— $577 billion from cuts to mandatory programs: about 40 percent are Medicare savings (mostly reducing overpayments), 10 percent are Medicaid/SCHIP savings, and the rest are from agricultural subsidies, federal employee benefits, and recalibrating government fees and program oversight
— $1.6 trillion, including $900 billion from allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for high-earners and capping tax subsidies
— $436 billion in interest savings

There are many things in here for progressives to like. First, it focuses on job creation, including in the proposal the American Jobs Act that the president released last week. That’s as it should be—a continued downturn makes fiscal balance near impossible. The first step of the Super Committee must be getting the economy back on track, and the AJA is a good start.

Second, the proposal moves toward a more fair and equitable tax code. The guiding principle for reform is the so-called “Warren Buffet rule,” which holds that middle-class Americans shouldn’t be paying a higher tax rate than high-income Americans. Beyond addressing fairness, the proposal acknowledges that considerably more revenue is needed; the alternative spending-cuts-only approach would unacceptably force the brunt of deficit reduction on the backs of poor and working families. Furthermore, the president also issued a veto threat against any legislation that affects Medicare benefits without also including additional tax revenue from high-earners and corporations, a welcome sign that the president actually intends to use his constitutional powers as leverage in the coming negotiations.

Third, the proposal includes savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This reflects the fact that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are extremely expensive (nearly $1.3 trillion has already been appropriated for these wars over the last decade), and drawing them down entails substantial savings.

Fourth, the proposal generally takes the right approach to reforming health programs, doubling down on the health care reforms in the Affordable Care Act. On Medicare, it focuses on health provider savings while maintaining the commitment to seniors. The Medicaid savings are less positive, as they could shift costs to states and even undermine health care reform. But these proposals stand in stark contrast to the House Republican plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program—leaving seniors to fend for themselves in predatory, broken insurance markets—and cut Medicaid in half over the next two decades.

And fifth, the proposal does not cut Social Security, a recognition of the fact that the program does not impact the deficit over the long run. The president took a firm position that any Social Security reform must be done on a separate legislative track, one that focuses not on deficit reduction but rather on protecting it for future generations.

The outlined budget proposal would provide a counterweight to the lopsided discretionary spending cuts from the Budget Control Act and flip federal fiscal policy from being an obstacle to a force for economic recovery. This budget outline would also stabilize deficits and begin to reduce debt as a share of the economy in a balanced manner consistent with commitments to a fair tax code and economic security programs for children and seniors. Hopefully, the Super Committee will mirror this dual focus of strengthening the economy today and improving the long-term fiscal outlook in a balanced fashion.