Economics Daily Digest: An amicable break-up

By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to receive the Daily Digest via e-mail.

Sen. Sherrod Brown explains why he wants to break up the big banks (WaPo)

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal talks to the Ohio progressive about the need to end "too big to fail" and how it became something he and David Vitter can agree on'a category usually limited to things like "Nasty weather lately!" or "It is 2:30 PM."

Why we need to raise the minimum wage (LA Times)

Andy Stern and Carl Camden make the case that the 8 million workers who fall below the poverty line deserve a wage that reflects the value they provide and the respect they deserve, not government aid that doubles as a consolation prize for Good Effort.

Federal Austerity's Bite on Job Growth (NYT)

Binyamin Appelbaum writes that Friday's jobs report isn't just about the 236,000 jobs added last month; it's also about the 142,000 jobs a month we won't be adding thanks to deficit hawks' determination to, um, save the economy'even if they have to kill it.

Long-Term Unemployment Inches Up in February Jobs Report (HuffPo)

Arthur Delaney finds more gray clouds to go with the report's silver lining: despite overall improvement, the number of Americans out of work for six months or more increased. Now policymakers will need to try that much harder to convince them to give up.

When Public Is Better (Prospect)

Robert Kuttner argues that what we need isn't a smaller government, but one that does what we want it to do directly and effectively instead of contracting its work out to a third party, which often results in privatizing the foul-ups and socializing the blame.

Don't Cut Social Security, Expand It (Bloomberg)

Josh Barro notes that as Obama wines and dines the GOP, chained CPI may once again be served up on a platter. But cutting Social Security isn't the answer to any question except "What is the government really good at, and how do we make it worse?"

In the South and West, a Tax on Being Poor (NYT)

Katherine Newman writes that while the federal tax code is progressive, there's a stark regional divide in state taxes, and the more regressive systems make it look like they've confused the idea of eradicating poverty with eradicating the poor people.

How Washington Could Make College Tuition Free (Without Spending a Penny More on Education) (The Atlantic)

Jordan Weissman notes that instead of spending $77 billion on federal student aid in the form of tax breaks and grants last year, the government could have paid to give every student in the state university system a free ride. So what if it just... did that?

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.