The dynamism of the U.S. economy is frequently underappreciated. Several recent studies provide new evidence that American households experience considerable mobility over time in income, earnings, and wealth. Contrary to prevailing public opinion that households get stuck at a given income or wealth level for decades or generations, there is actually a significant amount of movement up and down the economic ladder over... More

Even if the share of the debt held by foreign investors and governments does not increase over the next decade, CBO’s projection suggests that we’ll be shipping fully 2 percent of our GDP (almost $500 billion) overseas each year by the end of the decade, just to pay the interest on foreign holdings of U.S. government debt.

Brazil made a political decision back in the 1970s that it did not wish to be vulnerable to the price shocks that the various Middle Eastern crises delivered to its economy, as it was much more dependent on foreign oil back then than the United States was. In 1980, Brazil imported 77 percent of its oil. Today, Brazil imports 0.0 percent of its oil needs. Has it replaced oil with something else? Hardly.  Brazilian oil... More

The top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom—and leave them starved for revenue in a bust.

I don’t mean to be apocalyptic here,  in the face of the terrible tragedy hitting the Japanese people.  But I think the current crisis is going to accelerate the aging of Japanese society, especially if the nuclear disaster gets worse.  And  I’m wondering whether we are seeing the beginning of the end of Japan as an industrial power.

With the slow pace of new construction, neither the housing nor commercial real estate markets can any longer be characterized as having supply that significantly exceeds the fundamentals of demand.

Rooftop solar is several times more dangerous than nuclear power and wind power. It is still much, much safer than coal and oil.

Social Security expenditures began in 2010 to exceed incoming program tax revenue for the first time since the last major Social Security repairs in 1983. CBO estimated this 2010 cash deficit to be $37 billion.

A primary objective of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was to increase the health security of the American people. But health security, no matter how well intentioned, will be fleeting if the programs upon which that security depends are unaffordable for taxpayers.

The traditional measures of credit risk in state and city bonds are the ratings from Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, budget deficits, outstanding debt  and pension underfunding. These measures are all valuable to investors. But they are only symptoms of the disease. The structural problem is that government has too many mouths to feed. It’s possible to quantify that problem. The result is a metric that I call the... More

U.S. life expectancy has hit another all-time high, rising to 78.2 years (see chart). The estimate of 78 years and 2 months is for a baby born in 2009, and comes from a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As you might imagine, a nation whose relative economic power is on the rise will see its share of the U.S. national debt it might own rise over time, which will most often be a result of it being able to run a trade surplus with the United States for a sustained period of time.

Congress is considering legislation that would limit states' power to tax individuals who work in a state for less than 30 days. Currently, most states require tax payments and even tax withholding for workers in the state for much shorter periods of time, including as little as a day. Traditionally imposed only on entertainers and athletes, increasing availability of public schedules is enabling states to reach... More

According to a new ranking of 163 countries, Europe’s big economies, including France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom are the most exposed to fiscal risk due to their ageing populations, substantial levels of debt and high public spending on health and pensions.

Those of us still bleary eyed this morning thanks to Daylight Saving Time will take no solace from a study that notes our sacrifice for springing forward does little to save energy.

There were five unemployed workers for every available job in January, a ratio that has been virtually unchanged for several months, according to a the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Overall, teens  make up 22.8% of all individuals who earned the federal minimum wage or less in 2010, while young adults represented 26.2% of all minimum wage earners, for a combined representation of 49.0%.The next largest group...

Whether interest rates are rising or falling, there’s going to be a dark side to the 30-year fixed rate mortgage for either the borrower or the lender, and that’s why it’s a mortgage product that doesn’t exist in most other countries. Under a more typical mortgage market like in neighboring Canada, mortgage rates aren’t fixed for three decades, but adjust every five years or less.

The underlying economics of free trade and protectionism are summarized in the chart.

The typical single woman spends less than 5 percent of her income on “apparel and services,” with a plurality of her income spent on shelter.

The six most active sponsors of outside-shareholder proposals are not hedge funds or large institutional investors but rather certain individuals (often called corporate gadflies); certain labor unions; and certain religious groups and other issue-advocacy organizations, according to a new study by Proxy Monitor. More than 5 percent of all proposals were sponsored by two labor unions: the AFL-CIO; and the American Federation... More

The record high level of U.S. natural gas production in 2010 and record monthly output in December helped drive the average residential gas price for the month of December down to $9.86 per 1,000 cubic feet, the lowest monthly average since February 2004.

Here is a a tool based upon our analysis of gas prices and unemployment during previous price spikes that you can use to anticipate what the jobs situation will be like two years from now.

It is a common misperception that the United States has made little progress in improving its energy efficiency over the last generation. “The United States is known throughout the world as a pathetic energy hog,” Newsweek magazine wrote last fall. Not true.