Before this last recession, readers of a long time here might recall that I used my flower shop as a barometer for the economy. I noted that things were not doing well as our sales had started to decline in August of 2006. The smart boys and girls called it December 2008 as starting December […]
My last post on the circular flow using labor and capital incomes sure was a mess. As you would see, some of the post had to be scratched out. I was not happy with the circular flow. What you are witnessing is a creative process. The circular flow model needed a lot of work. So […]
by Linda Beale The Tea Party’s Disruptive Anti-Government (and anti-tax) Politics The New York Times ran an interesting piece by Kim Messick on the Tea Party’s psyche yesterday: Messick, The Tea Party’s Paranoid Aesthetic, New York Times (Aug. 10, 2013). It’s worth trying to understand this political group’s understanding of itself, since it ” is […]
This is a quick post to a question in the comments section by Jerry Critter on the circular flow model using labor income. He asks, “To improve the economy, we hear two somewhat conflicting stories. One, we need to increase government spending, or, two, we need to reduce business taxes. Can your model compare the […]
In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and […]
Brad DeLong adds his voice to the people addressing the retirement woes of many: Edward Filene’s idea from the 1920s of having companies run employer-sponsored defined-benefit plans has, by and large, come a-crashing down. Companies turn out not to be long-lived enough to run pensions with a high enough probability. And when they are there […]
Joseph Stiglitz offers perspective on the bankruptcy of Detroit and its wider context: At one level, one might shrug: companies die every day; new ones are born. That is part of the dynamics of capitalism. So, too, for cities. Maybe Detroit and cities like it are just in the wrong location for the goods and […]
As I said, I was going to post a version of the circular flow model for current conditions of the economy. Setting up the model Conditions for national accounts and other numbers are currently… (See these graphs CGINX, XM, Undistprof) Real GDP of $15.650 trillion. (2009 dollars) Effective demand limit of $16.1 trillion. (real 2009 […]
We interrupt our daily coverage for this moment of humor: Congress Fiercely Divided Over Completely Blank Bill That Says And Does Nothing WASHINGTON—A blank piece of legislation that says nothing, does nothing, and contains no text whatsoever has been the source of heated debate in Washington this week, and has sharply divided Congress along partisan lines, Beltway sources confirmed […]