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Here's a data point that slipped under the radar when the U.S. Labor Department released its latest job numbers earlier this month: Layoffs of public sector workers accounted for the biggest chunk of pink slips handed out overall in September.

It's no secret that the technology industry is gung-ho about a corporate tax repatriation holiday. After all, many big tech firms do a huge amount of business abroad and have piled up a mountain of foreign profits that they are now itching to bring home during a one-time holiday where they would pay a fraction of the usual tax rate. In fact, no other industry now holds more cash overseas.

They say it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. But a month or two from now, I expect media outlets to look at their outlays for coverage of Herman Cain's campaign -- the thousands of dollars shelled out for plane fare, rental cars, hotels and so on -- and be appalled. In the age of contraction,  political coverage is increasingly a zero sum game.

Listen to some critics and you might think that a thriving greens jobs sector is just another utopian fantasy.

In fact, it is an empirical reality.

One of the most frustrating things about the present moment is that public distrust of government is surging at exactly the moment when we need a bold and effective public sector. Worse, while Americans now seem ready to tackle the biggest problem of recent decades -- rising inequality -- it's easy to derail such action in the face of widespread distrust of government.

Maine Sec. of State Charlie Summers

Critics love to beat up on government for its screw-ups and misfires -- as if these mistakes prove the point that the public sector can't do anything right. Exhibit A of late is the failed loan to Solyndra, which has been seized on as evidence that Washington can't create green jobs or do industrial policy more generally.

Economic mobility is a tricky subject and it helps to do your homework before offering opinions in this area. Case in point is the recent speech by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan at the Heritage Foundation.

Earlier this week, Governor Rick Perry released a tax plan that would further shift the federal tax burden off the wealthy and on to the rest of us.

Listen to anyone talking about Occupy Wall Street and inevitably, rising inequality will emerge as one of the main concerns. And, rightfully so. The United States now has income inequality levels on par with countries like Mexico and Argentina.

While a growing body of research documents the many negative effects of economic inequality, these impacts are not reflected in any national accounting measure. Fortunately, though, there is progress on the state level.

Advocates of low taxes and small government like to say that America's economy -- and our society -- works best when individuals and businesses direct how the nation's wealth is used, and government's hands are kept far from the tiller. The genuis of the market, it is said, is that myriad decisions based on self-interest produce outcomes that maximize overall prosperity and well-being.

One enduring mystery of the Republican Party's extreme anti-tax position is who they are speaking for? Does any substantial swath of the American public really oppose tax increases so much that they want this option completely off the table as a means for taming the deficit?

Republican leaders in Congress like to talk about the need to foster more economic "certainty" and "reassure" the markets. Just yesterday, for example, House Speaker John Boehner appealed for cutting social insurance programs on the grounds that "Nothing – nothing – would send a more reassuring message to the markets than taking bipartisan steps to fix the structural problems in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."

One enduring mystery of the Republican Party's extreme anti-tax position is who they are speaking for? Does any substantial swath of the American public really oppose tax increases so much that they want this option completely off the table as a means for taming the deficit?

Poverty is often described as one of the most intractable problems facing America. That's nonsense. We know how to make big reductions in poverty with clear-cut public policy solutions.

Occupy Wall Street has already accomplished a great deal by shifting public discourse in this country. Instead of focusing on the need for austerity and deficit reduction, attention is rightly being directed at economic disparities and the deep structural problems that the United States faces.

There is no bigger national challenge right now than putting Americans pack to work, but little agreement on the magic formula that will create the consumer demand needed to jumpstart the economy and spark new hiring. Democrats favor more stimulus, Republicans argue for tax cuts and deregulation.

As I have written on numerous occasions, the evidence is squarely on the Democratic side of the argument. Spending on things like infrastructure, unemployment benefits, and food stamps is a more effective way to create jobs during the current downturn than tax cuts and deregulation.

Sometimes getting it half right means that you got it all wrong. Such is the case with the New York Times' coverage of the Census' Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM).