Hicks: Income inequality tied to capital investments
French economist Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” is far and away one of the most important books on the economy in some time.
Economic Analysis
Articles
HICKS: Promises to veterans too expansive to keep
A promise of nearly infinite health care to any large group of people has a nearly infinite cost.
Hicks: Hoosiers voting to pay for better public services
I have long argued that Hoosier taxpayers are willing to spend more in places where they can see results. The results of the recent election suggest I am right about that.
Hicks: Many women sacrifice careers for their children
Mother’s Day is a splendid opportunity to think about the evolving economic effects of women as parents, how this influences their economic lives, and how women value motherhood in economic terms.
Hicks: State, local government unbalanced in Indiana
Having lived and worked in three states over the past decade, I have watched how state policy influences local government.
Hicks: Obama pitches gender pay gap to the gullible
If we separate people into two groups by age, education, gender, race, occupation or almost any other factor, their average wages differ in some way. But this sort of comparison doesn’t tell us much. If we use statistical methods that account for multiple characteristics, wage differences for most factors disappear.
Hicks: Tax rates only half the story of government
With the passing of April 15 and the annual ritual of tax filings, news pages are filled with discussion about the size of federal, state and local tax burdens.
Hicks: Measuring the immeasurable is huge challenge
One aspect of economic research I think is especially powerful is the ability to measure or monetize the things humans clearly value but for which a market price is not necessarily apparent.
Hicks: Economics lessons for today are simple, hard
Far too much worry is placed in the short-run ups and downs of the economy, but I am not worried about business where errors are ultimately punished. The real worry is that public policy will extend its embrace of short-run fixes, which are chimerical.
Hicks: Medical firms are largest perpetrators of fraud
Medicaid and Medicare fraud is where the real money lies, costing taxpayers some $100 billion a year, or 10 percent of total costs. This is many times more than the highest estimate of fraud in all other assistance programs combined. Nearly all of this fraud is perpetrated by health care providers.
Hicks: Inflation could precede real economic recovery
The new Keynesian model suggests that a government stimulus might work to temporarily boost consumption or investment just like the old Keynesian model does. But the new model requires businesses and households to adjust their buying because of fears of expected inflation.
Hicks: Local government should track job growth, too
Before we get down to evaluating economic development incentives, we ought to understand just what it means to “create a job” and how we can honestly evaluate tax incentive policies.
Hicks: Choke Russian ambitions with a Fed strategy
The Soviet, er … Russian, invasion of Ukraine offers a nice reminder of JFK’s old dictum that domestic policy can defeat us, but foreign policy can get us killed. As we pay higher gasoline prices, we ought to think about the world as it is and our options.
Hicks: Public policies muddle minimum wage debate
Late last month, a Congressional Budget Office study on a proposed minimum-wage hike concluded that raising the minimum wage 39 percent, from $7.25 to $10.10, would reduce employment by roughly 500,000 jobs.
Hicks: Marriage patterns add to income inequality
After World War II, Americans began to marry later in life and with far fewer geographic restrictions. The “marriage market” shifted from small towns to colleges and workplaces. So, educational attainment, not race and religion, became a more important factor.
Hicks: It’s irrational to dislike most rich people
The plain fact is, of the households with earnings in the top fifth, only 0.0016 percent earn more than half their income from stock dividends. Simply put, most rich households work. It is also plainly true that someone else’s riches don’t come at the expense of the rest of us. There is not a finite amount of income.
Hicks: Sustainable middle class now built on work
America’s middle class was first built upon an unsustainable combination of low-productivity, high-wage jobs in large factories. The second half of the 20th century saw a different middle class emerge, with workers across many industries applying high-value-added human capital to the production of goods and increasingly services.
Hicks: Policy levers to fight poverty hit their limitations
The big lesson on research and data about poverty is the limited effectiveness of public policy. For healthy people in long-term poverty, nearly all have made at least one of the big three mistakes: quitting high school, using drugs or having kids without a partner.
Hicks: Consumption inequality is the real issue
No economic facts are likely to steer the policy debate away from income inequality. This is mostly because today’s discussion is simply a convenient way to change the subject from other policy failures.
Hicks: Labor markets respond to choices, good or bad
There are many causes to income inequality, most significantly that labor markets value different skills in different ways.