U.S. Budget and Economy

Did the Assault Weapons Ban Work? (Part 2) As mentioned in a prior post , David Kopel, a professor at the University of Denver, was on the December 17th edition of The PBS Newshour . Regarding the assault weapons ban, he said the following: Well, I think we can look at what happened when she had her 10-year in the past. The Congress, when it enacted that ban, also ordered that a formal study be done of the results of it. The study was performed by the Urban Institute, a very well-respected, somewhat left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., and the Urban Institute reported that it had no effect on homicide rates. There was no statistically significant benefit in terms of saving lives. As I described in the prior post , the Urban Institute study reached no such conclusion. In any event, David Kopel was back on the January 16th edition of The PBS Newshour during which he said the following: Well, the Department of Justice conducted a study of the effectiveness of that ban, pub...

On November 29th, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released the preliminary estimate of corporate profits for the 3rd quarter of 2012 (a revised estimate was released on December 20th). Following that, a number of publications ran stories reporting that corporate profits had reached a record high while wages had fallen to a record low. For example, CNN Money ran an online story on December 4th . Following is an excerpt: In the third quarter, corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago, according to last week's gross domestic product report. That took after-tax profits to their greatest percentage of GDP in history. But the record profits come at the same time that workers' wages have fallen to their lowest-ever share of GDP. "That's how it works," said Robert Brusca, economist with FAO Research in New York, who said there is a natural tension between profits and the cost of labor. "If one gets bigger, the other gets smaller." ...