• Marshall Auerback argues that Germany is the “big loser” in the Euro-crisis.
• Robert Skidelsky looks at the problems facing China.
• Robert Kuttner outlines “a growth strategy for Europe.”

That year, 883,228 working families in North Carolina received $110.1 million in  EITC-related tax refunds. Refunds were delivered to families in every one of the state’s 100 counties. Moreover, the number of families receiving the credit grew by 9.6 percent between 2008 and 2010.

… One is that many Americans reflexively associate large deficits with excessive spending, even though reductions in tax revenues have played just as big a role since George W. Bush became president. (Compare, for example, receipts and outlays in 2000 and 2011 as a percentage of GDP.) Then they associate excessive spending with Democrats, although the only president to reduce spending significantly in the past forty years was Bill Clinton. It turns out that if you repeat the same tired attack lines year after year—Democrats are all tax and spend liberals, for example—people believe them.
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The other, more important reason why Republicans like talking about the national debt is that Democrats don’t have a good response. Sure, Democrats have lots of policy proposals, and theirs make a good deal more sense than the Republicans’; it was President Obama who proposed trillions of dollars in spending cuts and tax increases, which is what people supposedly want (according to opinion surveys, at least).
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But most Democrats just don’t like talking about deficits and the national debt. They think it’s a distraction from talking about jobs and unemployment, or they think simply broaching the subject is succumbing to a vast right-wing conspiracy to slash entitlements, or both. The result is that there is no liberalprogressive position on the national debt….

• Paul Krugman offers the case for bank regulation.
• Economix looks at the impact of public investments.
• Simon Johnson argues for Jamie Dimon to resign from the NY Fed.
• Brad DeLong puts the current labor market recovery in context.

Technology companies deliver amazing products and services, and Facebook is a prime example of how breakthroughs in the tech sector can change how we live. But don’t look to the tech sector to create the middle class jobs of tomorrow. Facebook illustrates this reality. Even as the company has become spectacularly successful, and vastly enriched individuals associated with it, it has generated relatively few jobs.
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Facebook added just over 1,000 jobs in 2011, bringing its total work force to 3,200 employees. Indirectly, through the apps and other subsidiary components supported by Facebook, the company is estimated to have created between 53,000 and 129,000 jobs in the United States.
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Even if Facebook doubles or triples its labor force with the new investment capital it raises from the IPO, it will employ vastly fewer people than any other U.S. corporation of a similar value in the range of $100 billion. For example, PepsiCo has 285,000 employees with a market value of $103 billion, according to Fortune. Abbott Laboratories employs 91,000 people with a market value of $95.6 billion. Walt Disney has 156,000 employees with a market value of $77 billion. Bank of America, with a market value of $102 billion has 284,000 employees. GM, with a third the market cap of Facebook, has 209,000 employees.

• David Kirp traces the decline in interest in desegregating schools.
• Suzy Khimm mulls the limits of a financial transactions tax, and Dean Baker responds.
• Economist’s View discusses one transmission mechanism for inequality.
• The News & Record reports on the debate over “fracking” in North Carolina.

Remember that average tax rates normally are much lower than marginal ones thanks to various exemptions, deductions, and credits.

An even larger problem with the Treasury analysis, Mr. [Edward] Kane [of Boston College] said, is its failure to calculate the value of the subsidy that taxpayers provided to rescue recipients. “You would not pass Economics 101,” he said, “if you didn’t understand the opportunity costs involved in providing the subsidy.”
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The programs provided enormous amounts of money at below-market terms for extended periods, he said. Had those guarantees been priced at their true market value — what a private investor would have charged to lend during those dire days — taxpayers should have received far higher returns.
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Timothy G. Massad, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, said: “We believe the fact that we took strong, forceful action resulted in us preventing significant economic costs, including the risk of a second Great Depression….”
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Charles W. Calomiris, is a professor at Columbia Business School ….. He worked with Mr. Kane on the critique of the Treasury’s analysis and said in an interview last week: “Pretending that when providing these subsidies all you have to do is get your money back and not get an adequate return accounting for risk — that is not a good accounting for cost.”

• Paul Krugman isn’t optimistic about the Euro.
• Economix reports on income inequality and social mobility.
• James Kwak explains “why markets won’t fix JPMorgan.”
• Working Economics refutes “misguided views of Social Security.”
• Robert Shiller argues for better economic metaphors.

“Knowing what’s happening in our economy is so desperately important to keeping our economy functioning smoothly,” said Maurine Haver, the chief executive and founder of Haver Analytics, a data analysis company. “The reason the Great Recession did not become another Great Depression is because of the more current economic data we have today that we didn’t have in the 1930s.”
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She added that having good data about the state of the economy was one of America’s primary competitive advantages. “The Chinese are probably watching all this with glee,” she said, noting that the Chinese government has also opted not to publish economic data on occasion, generally when the news wasn’t good.
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Other private companies and industry groups — including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Home Builders— are up in arms.
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Target recently released a video explaining how it used these census data to determine where to locate new stores. Economic development organizations and other business groups say they use the numbers to figure out where potential workers are.

• Naked Capitalism advises against trying to still live in 2004.
• The Huffington Post sheds some light on DC-style inbreeding.
• The New York Times reports on demographic change in America.
• Nouriel Roubini argues that “Greece must exit” the Eurozone.
• Simon Johnson calls for investigating JPMorgan Chase.

“Job growth in North Carolina has slowed steadily over the course of 2012,” said John Quinterno, a principal with South by North Strategies, Ltd., a research firm specializing in economic and social policy. “Compared to last December, North Carolina has 25,900 more jobs, but 85 percent of that gain occurred in January. Over the last two months, North Carolina has essentially netted no new jobs.”

In April, North Carolina employers cut 1,300 more payroll jobs than they added (+/- 0 percent). Private sector payroll levels essentially held steady, (-1,200, +/- 0 percent), as was the case in the public sector (-100, +/- 0 percent). Within the private sector, manufacturing shed the most jobs, (-2,900, -0.7 percent), followed by information (-1,100, -1.6 percent) and other services (-900, -0.6 percent). Professional and business services netted the most jobs (+3,600, +0.7 percent), due mainly to hiring in the administrative and waste management subsector.

A positive revision to the March payroll data found that the state lost 500 fewer jobs than first reported (-800 versus -1,300). With that revision, North Carolina now has, on net, 218,600 fewer payroll positions (-5.2 percent) than it did in December 2007. Since bottoming out in February 2010, the state has netted an average of 4,142 payroll jobs per month, resulting in a cumulative gain of 107,700 positions (+2.8 percent).

“Over the past few years, North Carolina has managed to close some of the job gap caused by the recent recession,” noted Quinterno. “Since last July, the job gap has fallen by a full percentage point, yet compared to December 2007, North Carolina has fewer payroll jobs in every major private industry sector except for educational and health services and professional and business services. The improvements that have occurred have occurred very slowly.”

The household data for April also point to a labor market characterized by widespread joblessness. Last month saw a small increase in the number of employed individuals (+1,471, <0.1 percent) and a decline in the number of unemployed persons (-12,686, -2.8 percent). Yet the size of the labor force decreased by 11,215 individuals (-0.2 percent). It was this decline rather than an increase in employment that pushed the statewide unemployment rate down to 9.4 percent, the lowest level recorded in over three years.

To place the scale of unemployment in context, consider how there were almost twice as many unemployed North Carolinians in April 2012 as there were in December 2007. The statewide unemployment rate also was 4.4 percentage points greater than it was over four years ago. In fact, the monthly statewide unemployment rate has exceeded 10 percent in 35 of the last 40 months. Moreover, the share of the adult population with a job remains at a depressed level.

“While North Carolina’s job market began 2012 moving in a positive direction, it has failed to maintain that momentum,” observed Quinterno. “The state has experienced virtually no net job growth over the last two months. While the unemployment rate has fallen by half a percentage point since February, the decline is due largely to people leaving the labor force. Recovery remains a distant goal for jobless North Carolinians—a goal that still is being measured in terms of years.”

• Matt Taibbi peaks behind the curtain of Goldman Sachs.
• Economix looks at “how older workers weather layoffs.”
• Martin Wolf wonders about the future of the United States.
• The NC Budget & Tax Center analyzes rates of employment growth.

Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 10,667 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 101,717 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, the average number of initial claims was lower, and the average number of continuing claims was lower.

One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 11,698,  and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 111,557.

In recent weeks covered employment has increased and now exceeds the level recorded a year ago (3.76 million versus 3.71 million). Nevertheless, there are still fewer covered workers than there were in January 2008, which means that payrolls are smaller today than they were over four years ago.

The graph shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims measured as a share of covered employment in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007. 

Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably.  Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions.

One interesting thing to note is that the number in between 8.7 percent and 8.5 percent, a threshold the country just crossed, was the average unemployment rate for African Americans going into the recession. The rate from 2006-2007 for African American men and women over 16 was 8.6 percent….
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Total African American unemployment is currently at 15.8 percent and has been hovering around 16 percent for three years now. All the other major employment health indicators are down as well. For instance, the employment-to-population ratio is down to 51 percent from 60 percent in 2001. Nearly half of all African Americans aren’t working.
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The economy is terrible for all Americans right now and we desperately need action to both expand the economy and repeal attempts to contract it. But it is worth remembering that the unemployment misery all Americans are experiencing right now is equal to what it was like during the best two years of the 21st century for African Americans.

• The News & Record reports on the gender pay gap in North Carolina.
• Economix points out the lack of a clear definition of “the welfare state.”
• Paul Krugman explains “why we regulate.”
• Andrew Leonard of Salon argues why “tuition is too damn high.”

• Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett worry about “the human disaster of unemployment.”
• Suzy Khimm looks into the debate over the American Community Survey.
• Off the Charts rounds about data about Social Security’s finances.
• Rortybomb debunks the latest crop of structural unemployment arguments.

Southerners interested in sharing their thoughts about the topic should complete a brief survey that is available here.

• The Charlotte Observer reports on Bank of America’s weakening ties to the city.
• The Center for American Progress highlights five facts about poor single mothers.
• Barry Eichengreen wonders if  “the Euro doomsayers” are right.
• Felix Salmon’s blog rounds up the latest in the JPMorgan Chase debacle.
• Richard Thaler isn’t buying “slippery-slope logic” regarding health care.

One of the distressing threads in the article was elected officials and even students arguing that it was completely reasonable to expect students to carry most of the freight of their education. I wonder if any of the ones over, say, 35 giving that view would be anywhere near as comfortable as they are now if that had been required of them. You can see the open, casual rendering of one of the obligations of society, that of educating the young.
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I’ve never understood when (once in a while) someone (clearly young) shows up in comments and rails against Social Security and Medicare because of the burden it imposes on him. Now I get it. The student debt issue is deepening social fractures. If young people are asked to stand on their own, and given only unpalatable choices (forego a college degree, the entrance ticket to middle class life, or accept debt slavery at a tender age), no wonder they adopt a “devil take the hindmost” attitude. I hope some of these people who so cavalierly argue for loading up the next generation with debt realize that the young may not want to take care of them either, and they are far more at risk. The outcome of cutting social safety nets to the elderly ultimately means that old people will die faster.

The roots of the borrowing binge date to the 1980s, when tuition for four-year colleges began to rise faster than family incomes. In the 1990s, for-profit colleges boomed by spending heavily on marketing and recruiting. Despite some ethical lapses and fraud, enrollment more than doubled in the last decade and Wall Street swooned over the stocks. Roughly 11 percent of college students now attend for-profit colleges, and they receive about a quarter of federal student loans and grants.
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In the last decade, even as enrollment at state colleges and universities has grown, some states have cut spending for higher education and many others have not allocated enough money to keep pace with the growing student body. That trend has accelerated as state budgets have shrunk because of the recent financial crisis and the unpopularity of tax increases.
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Nationally, state and local spending per college student, adjusted for inflation, reached a 25-year low this year, jeopardizing the long-held conviction that state-subsidized higher education is an affordable steppingstone for the lower and middle classes. All the while, the cost of tuition and fees has continued to increase faster than the rate of inflation, faster even than medical spending. If the trends continue through 2016, the average cost of a public college will have more than doubled in just 15 years, according to the Department of Education.

Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 10,720 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 103,232 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, the average number of initial claims was lower, and the average number of continuing claims was lower.

One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 12,596,  and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 114,339.

In recent weeks covered employment has increased and now exceeds the level recorded a year ago (3.76 million versus 3.71 million). Nevertheless, there are still fewer covered workers than there were in January 2008, which means that payrolls are smaller today than they were over four years ago.

The graph shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims measured as a share of covered employment in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007. 

Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably.  Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions.

• The News & Record reports on the growth in manufacturing employment.
• National Public Radio reports on the employment prospects of college graduates.
• Simon Johnson call for “breaking up four big banks.”
• Robert Reich says the election should be about what happens in America’s boardrooms.

… Though there has been steady improvement in the last two-and-a-half years in the odds of finding a job, the odds are still stacked against job seekers. Furthermore, there is no major sector in which the odds for job seekers are strong. The number of unemployed workers outnumbers job openings across the board, underscoring that the main issue in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers, not workers being in the wrong sectors or having the wrong skills.
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The increased job openings did not translate into increased hires in March, as hires dropped slightly by 88,000 as compared with the previous month. Looking at the data over time, however, hires nevertheless are on a slow upward climb, up 18.4 percent since the official start of the recovery in June 2009. But hiring still has a long way to go before it is back to healthy levels. For example, hiring is still 16.1 percent below its 2007 average.

• Econbrowser decries “the war on data collection.”
• Joseph Sitglitz wonders what comes “after austerity.”
• Working Economics rounds up data on the long-term unemployed.
• Martin Wolf imagines what France should tell Germany.

The basic elements of Ryan’s plan are this: The tax code would be collapsed into two rates, with the top rate dropping to 25 percent, but eliminating unspecified tax deductions would keep tax revenues at the current level, as set by the Bush tax cuts. Medicare would remain untouched for those 55 years old and older, but those under would be given vouchers at a capped rate. Given that the Medicare savings would not begin to take effect for more than a decade, that taxes would stay level (at best), and that military spending would increase, Ryan would achieve his short-term deficit reduction by focusing overwhelmingly on programs targeted to the poor (which account for about a fifth of the federal budget, but absorb 62 percent of Ryan’s cuts over the next decade). The budget repeals Obamacare, thereby uninsuring some 30 million Americans about to become insured. It would then take insurance away from another 14 to 27 million people, by cutting Medicaid and children’s health-insurance funding.
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This is not a moderate plan. As Robert Greenstein, a liberal budget analyst, summed up the proposal, “It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history.” And yet, Ryan has managed to sell it as something admirable, and something else entirely: a deficit-reduction plan….

Ninety-five percent of the net job losses during the recession were in middle-skill occupations such as office workers, bank tellers, and machine operators, according to research by economists Nir Jaimovich of Duke University and Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia. That’s what we all assume happens in recessions: The middle class is hit hardest, then eventually climbs back. Only, that comeback isn’t happening. Job growth since the end of the recession has been clustered in high-skill fields inaccessible to workers without advanced degrees or in low-paying industries, the economists found.
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In March the U.S. had 2 million more managers and professionals working than five years earlier. Lower-paying service-sector jobs were up 1.5 million. It’s the middle-income jobs that have been slow to return. Over the same period, there were 3.2 million fewer Americans working in sales and office jobs and 1.2 million fewer employed in transportation and production—a broad category that includes factory and assembly-line workers, printers, welders, tailors, and poultry and meat plant workers. Another worrisome measurement: Median annual household income in March was $2,900 lower after inflation than at the start of the recovery in June 2009, according to Sentier Research, an economic consulting firm.

• Working Economics analyzes underemployment among recent college graduates.
• Rortybomb delves into secondary measures of national labor market performance.
• Naked Capitalism casts a skeptical eye on President Obama’s economic agenda.
• Paul Krugman looks at the European turn from austerity.
• John Cassidy mulls the consequences of the French elections for the US.

The truth is that recovery would be almost ridiculously easy to achieve: all we need is to reverse the austerity policies of the past couple of years and temporarily boost spending. Never mind all the talk of how we have a long-run problem that can’t have a short-run solution—this may sound sophisticated, but it isn’t. With a boost in spending, we could be back to more or less full employment faster than anyone imagines.
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But don’t we have to worry about long-run budget deficits? Keynes wrote that “the boom, not the slump, is the time for austerity.” Now, as I argue in my forthcoming book—and show later in the data discussed in this article—is the time for the government to spend more until the private sector is ready to carry the economy forward again. At that point, the US would be in a far better position to deal with deficits, entitlements, and the costs of financing them.
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Meanwhile, the strong measures that would all go a long way toward lifting us out of this depression should include, among other policies, increased federal aid to state and local governments, which would restore the jobs of many public employees; a more aggressive approach by the Federal Reserve to quantitative easing (that is, purchasing bonds in an attempt to reduce long-term interest rates); and less timid efforts by the Obama administration to reduce homeowner debt.

• TaxVox mulls the idea of tax fairness.
• Gary Bartless analyzes the April employment report.
• The New York Times reports on unpaid internships for college graduates.
• Brad DeLong rounds up the data on the decline in labor force participation.
• Jonathan Cohn argues that the health care reform expands individual liberty.

Watch For College Grads, Jobs Outlook Better but Far From Great on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

“April marked the 19th consecutive month of job growth in the United States,” said John Quinterno, a principal with South by North Strategies, Ltd., a research firm specializing in economic and social policy. “Over the past four months, the economy has netted an average of 132,000 jobs per month, a pace that, while positive, is simply not enough to drive unemployment down to normal levels anytime soon.”

In April, the nation’s employers added 115,000 more payroll positions than they cut. Gains occurred entirely in the private sector (+130,000), while government payrolls fell by 15,000 positions due primarily to cuts by local governments. Additionally, the payroll employment numbers for February and March underwent revisions; with the updates, the economy gained 413,000 jobs over those two months, not the 360,000 positions previously reported.

Employment levels in most major private-sector industry groups grew or held essentially steady in April. Professional and business services netted the most positions (+62,000, with 52.1 percent of the growth occurring in the administrative and waste services subsector), followed by education and health services (+23,000, with the health care subsector responsible for 82.6 percent of the net gain), and trade, transportation, and utilities (+22,000, due overwhelmingly to gains in the retail trade subsector). Meanwhile, the construction, information, and other services sectors shed the most positions (all -2,000).

“The American economy has added jobs steadily for a little more than 1.5 years and has netted 528,000 positions so far in 2012,” noted Quinterno. “The current pace of job growth is nevertheless modest relative to the size of the overall jobs gap, and, alarmingly, growth has slowed over the course of the year. A return to normal labor market conditions remains a distant goal, absent more attention and support from policymakers.”

Weak employment conditions were evident in the April household survey. Last month, 12.5 million Americans (8.1 percent of the labor force) were jobless and seeking work. The number of unemployed Americans and the unemployment rate basically held steady last month, while the size of the labor force fell (-342,000), as did the share of the population participating in the labor force (to 63.6 percent). Moreover, the share of the adult population with a job (58.4 percent) remained at a depressed level.

Last month, the unemployment rate was higher among adult male workers than female ones (7.5 percent versus 7.4 percent). Unemployment rates were higher among Black (13 percent) and Hispanic workers (10.3 percent) than among White ones (7.4 percent). The unemployment rate among teenagers was 24.9 percent. Moreover, 7.1 percent of all veterans were unemployed; the rate among recent veterans (served after September 2001) was 9.2 percent.

Jobs remained difficult to find in April. Last month, the underemployment rate equaled 14.5 percent. Among unemployed workers, 41.3 percent had been jobless for at least six months with the average spell of unemployment lasting for 39.1 weeks.

“The April employment report shows that the American economy is continuing to add jobs, though not as rapidly as is needed or was the case earlier in the year,” observed Quinterno. “The April employment report illustrates both how far the national labor market has come since the depths of the recession and just how far it still must go before reaching healthy levels of economic activity.”

Yeah, it was a libertarian paradise all right — with a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent, a third of the work force in unions, and a minimum wage much higher relative to the average wage than it is today.
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Propose a return to those conditions now, and everyone on the right would predict utter disaster. What we actually had was unprecedented prosperity.

• Diane Ravitch explains the privatization agenda for public education.
• Fed Watch analyzes the latest personal spending data.
• Simon Johnson worries about Mitt Romney’s extreme fiscal policy ideas.
• Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson asks just “who are the extractive elites.”

Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 10,806 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 105,331 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, the average number of initial claims was higher, and the average number of continuing claims was lower.

One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 12,282,  and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 115,863.

In recent weeks covered employment has increased and now exceeds the level recorded a year ago (3.75 million versus 3.71 million). Nevertheless, there are still fewer covered workers than there were in January 2008, which means that payrolls are smaller today than they were over four years ago.

The graph shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims measured as a share of covered employment in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007. 

Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably.  Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions.

Many such voters are also drawn to a particular austerity strategy my fellow Economix blogger Casey B. Mulligan laid out last week: cutting taxes for high earners and cutting subsidies for low earners. This strategy makes perfect sense if you believe that most people who are struggling to pay their bills aren’t trying hard enough.
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This argument appeals for several reasons. It absolves believers of any responsibility for other people’s hardships. It lends credence to the assertion that the labor market would work just fine if it weren’t jammed up by a social safety net. It lays the blame for persistent unemployment squarely on President Obama, who has urged extensions of unemployment benefits and other forms of public assistance.
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And this argument holds a partial truth: some people probably do shirk, letting access to unemployment benefits, food stamps or disability insurance reduce their job search efforts.
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But the number who fall into this category is small, and so are the overall effects, especially compared with the loss of output, effort, motivation, and well-being that results when people who need a job can’t find one.

North Carolina’s reliance on the personal income tax as its primary source of state revenues provides multiple important benefits to state residents. It ensures that state revenues are better able to keep pace with growth in the state’s economy and demand for public investments, and it better aligns North Carolinians’ state and local tax contributions with families’ ability to pay.
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Reforms to the personal income tax are certainly needed, but they should be done in a way that supports the consensus principles of comprehensive revenue modernization and, in so doing, ensure that North Carolina is positioned to invest in economic opportunity for all.

Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 10,511 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 106,736 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, the average number of initial claims was higher, and the average number of continuing claims was lower.

One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 12,698,  and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 118,693.

In recent weeks covered employment has increased and now exceeds the level recorded a year ago (3.75 million versus 3.71 million). Nevertheless, there are still fewer covered workers than there were in January 2008, which means that payrolls are smaller today than they were over four years ago.

The graph shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims measured as a share of covered employment in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007. 

Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably.  Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions.

• Eduardo Porter looks at Social Security Disability payments.
• Mark Thoma points out that the US is a relatively low-wage country.
• The Center for American Progress weighs the link between federal taxes and inequality.
• The New York Times reports on Apple’s efforts at tax avoidance.