Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Believing and Time

People tend to say things are bad and getting worse. They tend to get irritated when I note that the thing they mentioned is bad but has recently become less bad. There is some deep unwillingness to accept that levels, changes, and rates of change are different. Certainly people will argue that something is too […]

Tricky Transponders

General Disclaimer: I don’t know what I am writing about. I am an economist not an electical engineer. This should go without saying, but just in case, remember that I don’t know what I am typing about. Radar is used to determine where airplanes are. One use is air traffic control for civil aviation — […]

The Budget Deficit is an absurd calculation

The budget deficit is the change in the nominal face value of public debt. It is roughly unique (as far as I know) being the change in a quantity which is not corrected for inflation. We do not usually talk about nominal GDP growth or nominal wage growth. The sustainable deficit increases one for one […]

Medicare Spending Curve Bent

In 2010 Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts (there were 2) from now on called the ACA. One of the aims was to bend the Medicare spending curve and, they hoped (or dreamed) stop the increase in spending per beneficiary. The spending per beneficiary ceased increasing. Oh crap Chrome refuses to upload […]

Housekeeping Note

I have become addicted to Twitter. Among other things, I stopped posting here. Recently I posted a complaint about Chrome and messed up certificates (warnings that sites were not private because they had a dialog box pop up). Among other sites, this site had that problem with Chrome. I swore to never use Chrome again. […]

Now I’m angry with Gmail

Sorry to be so boring, but now I am angry with Gmail. It seems to me that Alphabet has adopted Elong Musk’s approach to customer service, programming, and destroying value. I wanted to send an e-mail and surfed to gmail.com. I was directed on to mail.google.come/mail/u/0/#inbox screenshot below. Notice there is no otion to use […]

Marking my Beliefs About Weapons to Market 4/N

I have written about my disagreements with the pentagon about military procurement here, here, and here, April 11 2022 I wrote “5. some relatively cheap weapons are highly effective. They include Javelin, NLAW, Stinger, and StarStreak shoulder fired missiles. They also include Bayraktar drones. They may include Switchblade suicide drones (not depoloyed yet). They have […]

Chrome Messes Up

Is anyone else having trouble with Chrome. I get a page not private error when I tried to open this page. I am now using Firefox. Chrome seems to have added a popup which, first of all, demands attention, but second of all causes older Chrome to correctly note that Chrome has become malware and […]

Chickens, Eggs, and Krugman

Paul Krugman has the amazing ability to get me (briefly) interested in economic theory. He writes that the (non provisional) IRA has had a larger than expected impact on investment writing: Paul Krugman has the amazing ability to get me (briefly) interested in economic theory. He writes that the (non provisional) IRA has had a […]