Economy

Get ready for spending cuts beyond the debt ceiling agreement. That deal only calls for spending caps, not spending floors. The regular appropriations process must be completed by Oct. 1, or else government operations shut down. The GOP will insist that those bills impose additional cuts. Any Democratic assertion of resistance will have no credibility in face of documented pattern of surrender. Oops. Turns out that costs and benefits of giving in to debt-ceiling hostage-taking were hopelessly miscalculated.

But belief that gains will eventually supplant short-term pain with broadly shared prosperity (as once was the rule) isn't necessarily so.

But belief that gains will eventually supplant short-term pain with broadly shared prosperity (as once was the rule) isn't necessarily so.

Could public investment in a super-fast internet infrastructure be a key piece of a national economic-revival strategy?

Missed this? Over the last generation, U.S. economic life has undergone a pair of parallel transformations: greater pressure on both parents to work full-time in order to provide a “middle-class” life for their families, together with a reshaping of the rules governing the economy often propelled by free market principles. So Remapping Debate spoke with a range of right-leaning policy thinkers to ask about the economic pressures facing families. What, if anything, could be done about it?

Miss this when it was first reported? What if, instead of persistently undercutting each other, states banded together in interstate agreements? What if they agreed on a common floor for environmental or business regulations? What if states agreed not to fish for jobs in their neighbor’s pond, or sought region-wide revenue increases that would eliminate the fear of being left behind or outgunned?