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American politics and the big picture
The U.S. is historically a Christian country. It's not just that 3 out of 4 Americans identify themselves as Christian. It's that the colonists who fought in the American revolution and who founded the United States were very largely—and often very devoutly—Christian. Their religion played a ...
Earlier this week, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism flagged a disturbing finding from a September survey of U.S. households. The survey, which was conducted by a consortium of financial planning industry groups in conjunction with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, found that one-third of Americans would ...
Earlier this week I wrote that the Supreme Court was likely to take up a case challenging the Affordable Care Act in the next term. The Obama administration decided Monday not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc review of its ruling that the provision requiring people to buy ...
The Affordable Care Act will get its final day in court soon. The Obama administration chose on Monday not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a key case in which the court found the law’s requirement that individuals buy insurance unconstitutional. The move suggests that the ...
Congress is not very popular. With its reputation for petty partisan bickering, Congress rarely is particularly popular. But the current Congress’ popularity has reached incredible new lows. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, just 12% of Americans say they approve of the way ...
Since its peak in 2007, the U.S. economy has lost almost 7 million jobs. Although the economy has begun to recover, jobs have been slow to return. Recent job growth has not been enough to keep up with growth in the country’s population. As Catherine Rampell’s comparative recession chart shows, this ...
Just about everyone realizes how bad the economy has been over the last few years. What most people don’t realize is that for most Americans the economy began to stagnate well before the financial crisis. While per capita income in the U.S. grew through the start of the financial crisis, in ...
On Thursday, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress, proposing a new $450 billion bill designed to create jobs. With unemployment still over 9%, Obama’s reelection chances may hinge on his doing everything in his power to get people back to work, or at least looking like he is. So ...
Where did America’s growth go? Economists can with reasonable accuracy break down a country’s economic growth into its various components. When you look at the data compiled by the St. Louis Fed, it’s clear that in key ways the U.S. economy has begun to rebound. But it’s also clear that the country ...
The U.S. government can borrow money right now at essentially no cost. But for political and ideological reasons the government is leaving what is essentially free money on the table. The government borrows money by issuing treasury bonds, which are essentially a promise to pay the buyer the ...
“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa,” Texas Governor Rick Perry said of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke at a campaign stop in Iowa. “But we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics ...
For the last two years the Republican Party has largely taken the position that taxes should never go up. They should only be lowered. For all the party’s talk of deficit reduction, Republicans balked during the debt ceiling negotiations at increasing tax revenues—even just by closing loopholes—to ...
Political scientists David Campbell and Robert Putnam published an op-ed in The New York Times this week arguing that the common idea about where the Tea Party comes from and who they are is wrong. Campbell and Putnam interviewed a sample of 3,000 people in 2006 as part of a project studying ...
President Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $86 million through the first half of this year. With unemployment high and disposable income stagnant, Obama faces a tough road to reelection. Obama’s job approval is down to an abysmal 39%, its lowest level ever. But a recent CNN/ORC ...
Big Think’s Peter Lawler thought Michele Bachmann won the Republican debate last night in advance of the Iowa straw poll. Other conservative commentators thought Texas Governor Rick Perry, who will announce his candidacy tomorrow, won simply by not being one of the uninspiring candidates on stage ...