The New Republic

Former Bush economic adviser Greg Mankiw whips up an analogy to explain why he's leery of even a deficit-neutral health care reform: Imagine you have a friend who has a budget problem.  Every month he spends more than he earns.  His credit card bills are piling up.  He is clearly on an unsustainable path.  Then one day he comes to you with an idea. READ MORE >>

"Verum Serum" has a post accusing yours truly of hypocrisy. I'm going to go through the argument because it reveals a common vein of misinformation that tends to circulate on among conservatives. On Friday, I pointed out that the American public thinks upper-income earners pay too little in taxes. Why is this hypocritical? Verum Serum explains: READ MORE >>

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The administration's proposal to charge large banks, which enjoy an implicit too-big-too-fail guarantee, is fairly straightforward market economics. Greg Mankiw concedes as much. Then, on the other side, you've got Marco Rubio, conservative dreamboat: READ MORE >>

Greg Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, explains that President Obama's large bank tax is pretty straightforward economics: One thing we have learned over the past couple years is that Washington is not going to let large financial institutions fail.  The bailouts of the past will surely lead people to expect bailouts in the future.  Bailouts are a specific type of subsidy--a contingent subsidy, but a subsidy nonetheless. READ MORE >>

A while ago, I criticized a new paper on the supremacy of the U.S. healthcare system that was being touted by Gary Becker and Greg Mankiw. The paper, by Samuel Preston and Jessica Ho at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that mortality trends for prostate and breast cancer were much better in the U.S. than in other advanced countries. READ MORE >>

Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment.     Greg Mankiw writes that the gas tax is not an issue that divides liberals and conservatives, but rather one that divides political consultants and policy wonks. I would put comparative effectiveness research (CER) in the same category. READ MORE >>

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Yesterday morning, Matthew Yglesias had a fairly devastating critique of former Bush Council of Economic Advisors chairman, and current Harvard economics professor, Greg Mankiw: READ MORE >>

Harvard economist (and former chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors) Greg Mankiw is by all accounts a very smart man, but like bloggers high and low, he is not above resorting to the labor-saving device of posting emails he's received. Take, for example, this political parable, which was sent to him by a student in his introductory economics class: READ MORE >>