Economic Policy Links, 2-15-12

It looks like the improving economy has also improved Obama's approval ratings.

Congress appears to have reached a deal to extend the payroll tax cut for the rest of the year.

Obama is proposing that we tax dividends for the wealthiest Americans.  David Miller, a tax lawyer, says the so-called "Buffet Tax" won't do much, but a "Zuckerberg Tax" on the value of stock in publicly-held companies would.  A pair of economists also disagree with taxing the rich, saying that we should instead tax inequality itself.

The fewest young adults in 60 years have jobs

When anti-poverty programs run out at certain thresholds, it means that the working poor have the highest marginal tax rates in the country

Jared Bernstein writes that it's time to start working on the next minimum wage increase

Here's an excerpt from an upcoming book the inside story of the second stimulus

And here are some well-regarded essays on recent economic trends that didn't fit on the syllabus:

Chrystia Freeland writes "The Rise of the New Global Elite" that a new elite class is being formed

What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.

Yural Levin writes in "Beyond the Welfare State" that our current economic trajectory is unworkable

The fact is that we do not face a choice between the liberal welfare state on one hand and austerity on the other. Those are two sides of the same coin: Austerity and decline are what will come if we do not reform the welfare state. The choice we face is between that combination and a different approach to balancing our society's deepest aspirations. America still has a little time to find such an alternative. Our moment of reckoning is coming, but it is not yet here. We have perhaps a decade in which to avert it and to foster again the preconditions for growth and opportunity without forcing a great disruption in the lives of millions, if we start now. But we do not yet know quite how. The answer will not come from the left, which is far too committed to the old vision to accept its fate and contemplate alternatives. It must therefore emerge from the right. Conservatives must produce not only arguments against the liberal welfare state but also a different vision, a different answer to the question of how we might balance our aspirations. It must be a vision that emphasizes the pursuit of economic growth, republican virtues, and social mobility over economic security, value-neutral welfare, and material equality; that redefines the safety net as a means of making the poor more independent rather than making the middle class less so; and that translates these ideals into institutional forms that suit our modern, dynamic society. That different vision is now beginning to take shape. Slowly, bit by bit, we are starting to see what must replace our welfare state.