When you read a CEA report, there is always a certain admixture of politics, and at some points over the roughly 40 years I’ve been reading these resorts, the partisanship has been severe enough to make me wince. But it’s also true that one can read just about any report looking for ways to discredit it. My own approach is instead to search for nuggets of fact and insight, and over the years, CEA reports have typically offered plenty.
2. Robert J. Samuelson writes,
Thumbing through the annual report of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is always an education. This year’s 430-page edition is no exception. Crammed with tables and charts, it brims with useful facts and insights.
●On page 62, we learn that the growth of state and local government spending on services (schools, police, parks) has been the slowest of any recovery since World War II. One reason: Payments into underfunded pensions are draining money from services. . .
Probably a useful corrective to my typical focus on what I didn’t like about the CEA report.
Just good enough to be dangerous? When the margin is thin, a little off is all the way off.