Rising cost of health insurance

Over at The Incidental Economist (see here) you can find access to one of their previous posts about the increase in the cost of health insurance (health insurance cost have risen three times faster than wages) over the last few years.  An article yesterday in the New York Times (see here) highlights the increase in health insurance premiums and deductibles.  The Incidental Economist has the following graph:

Perhaps an even more disturbing graph is the following:

OK, while I'm in the "bad news" mood, how about this graph?

So, all those "critics" of health care reform out there, what is your recommendation for this fine state of affairs?  I'm listening.

Interesting data on the sources of income

2011 - tough year!

As most of us know (at least those of us who have looked at our 401k portfolios recently), 2011 was a tough year.  How tough?  Well, The Capital Spectator (see here) has some data for us.

Interesting data on income

Political Calculations (see here) has some interesting data on income.

The impact of political language

The Pew Research Center released a report recently (see here) with the following graph:

Tax cuts and GDP Growth

The Council on Foreign Relations has an informative graph (see here) showing the impact of various factors on GDP growth in the U.S.

In the Council's post, there is the following:

U.S. annualized real GDP growth of 1.2% through Q3 2011 was driven by personal consumption, accounting for 91% of it.  Yet only 44% of personal consumption growth was driven by higher incomes.  The other 56% was accounted for by unsustainable items: a decline in savings (36%) and the payroll tax cut (20%).  The latter will expire in two months time unless Congress acts to extend it again.

A good post about national debt

Paul Krugman (see here) has a short and informative post regarding the issue of our national debt.  I would say that I wish many in Congress would read it, but I doubt it would matter.  Once you have become an ideologue (right-wing or left-wing), evidence no longer matters.  Below are some excerpts from the essay:

Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments. 

This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways. 

First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation. 

Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.