Democrats on Monday launched their push for the most significant expansion of the nation’s social safety net since the Great Society, unveiling a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would boost spending on health care, child and elder care, education and climate change while bypassing a promised Republican filibuster.

The blueprint, which the Senate hopes to pass by the end of this week, would allow Senate Democrats to piece together social policy legislation this fall, fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations. And if Democrats and their two independent allies can hold together, that measure could pass the Senate without a Republican vote.

That measure would pass after a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill likely clears the Senate on Tuesday. Together, they would secure the remainder of President Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, but the two-step effort will test Mr. Biden’s ability to both work with...

Democrats on Monday launched their push for the most significant expansion of the nation’s social safety net since the Great Society, unveiling a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would boost spending on health care, child and elder care, education and climate change while bypassing a promised Republican filibuster.

The blueprint, which the Senate hopes to pass by the end of this week, would allow Senate Democrats to piece together social policy legislation this fall, fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations. And if Democrats and their two independent allies can hold together, that measure could pass the Senate without a Republican vote.

That measure would pass after a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill likely clears the Senate on Tuesday. Together, they would secure the remainder of President Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, but the two-step effort will test Mr. Biden’s ability to both work with...

On Friday, May 15 at 12:30 PM ET, Paul Krugman joined the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance for a webinar on COVID-19 and the pace of economic recovery. Krugman is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a columnist at the New York Times, and a 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The event began with a brief discussion by Markus Brunnermeier, Director of the Princeton Bendheim Center for Finance. Both Brunnermeier and Krugman took questions from the audience throughout the event.

Watch the full presentation below and download the slides here.  You can also watch all Markus’ Academy webinars on the Princeton BCF YouTube channel.

Everyone has, at some point, been fooled into thinking something fake was real. Maybe it was a post on social media that you shared before realizing it was a spoof or satire. Maybe it was a bargain you saw that turned out not to be a bargain or that left you with some broken or falsely advertised product. Or maybe it was a grand conspiracy about rampant election fraud that spurred you to spend millions of dollars declaring that you alone knew the truth about what had happened — only to be told, over and over, that you were entirely and obviously wrong.

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For many of us, Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics — a boutique think tank specializing in, duh, international economics — has become the go-to guy for current developments in trade policy. His work tracking the evolution of Donald Trump’s trade war was invaluable.

Now he has a highly informative new paper with Thomas Bollyky on the vaccine supply chain. I won’t lie: There’s a lot of detail, and the paper is fairly heavy going. But it’s full of useful details, and it also, I’d argue, tells us some interesting things about the nature of world trade in the 21st century.

One thing that caught my eye — probably not the most important thing, but one close to my heart — is that the story of global vaccine production demonstrates the continuing relevance of the so-called New Trade Theory, or as some now call it, the “old New Trade Theory.”

Today, the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released a report outlining the opportunity costs of socialism on the macro economy, including standards of living, and the impact on the Federal budget.  Below is the executive summary.  Read the full report here.

Coincident with the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse. Detailed policy proposals from self-declared socialists are gaining support in Congress and among much of the electorate.

It is unclear, of course, exactly what a typical voter has in mind when he or she thinks of “socialism.” But economists generally agree about how to define socialism, and they have devoted enormous time and resources to studying its costs and benefits. With an eye on this broad body of literature, this report discusses socialism’s historic visions and intents, its economic features, its impact on economic performance, and its relationship with recent...

Today’s jobs report showed the economy added 943,000 jobs in July, for an average gain of 832,000 over the last three months. This is the fastest monthly job growth since August of last summer. Job gains in May and June were both revised up. In addition, the unemployment rate fell by 0.5 percentage point and labor force participation ticked up by 0.1 percentage point.

While this is a strong monthly report, it is important to focus on the trend of job growth. In addition, the economic recovery will not be complete until the public health situation is under control, as reinforced by the rise of Covid cases associated with the Delta variant.

1. Job growth over the last three months has averaged more than 800,000, up from earlier in the year.

Average job growth from May to July was 832,000 jobs a month (see Figure 1). Since monthly numbers can be volatile, it is important to focus on the three-month average rather than the data in a single month, as described...