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

Paying Fast Food Workers More . . . “Moo Cluck Moo”

                                         Picture by K Manley   With all the activity by fast food workers to increase their salary, one fast food restaurant located in Dearborn Heights (just outside of Detroit) and north of 94 on Telegraph is leading the way with increased hourly wages for its workers. Presently at $12.00/hour, “Moo Cluck Moo” is […]

New Jersey Subsidies More Out of Control than Ever Under Christie

I have written before how state and local subsidies are more out of control than ever, and more recently how the number and size of megadeals has increased substantially since the Great Recession. Now a new study from Governing magazine (h/t to Al at LinkedIn group Economic Development 2.0) exhaustively analyzes New Jersey’s five largest […]

Assuming Full-employment is foolish

Nick Rowe brings up an important issue and sends a warning. He says that New Keynesian economists are assuming full-employment. And it is foolish. Nick Rowe is correct. Keynes himself talked about how effective demand could stop output before full-employment is reached. The cause is deficient effective demand. And through the research that I do, […]

Econobloggers: Does Big Government Help or Hurt Growth? Or Neither?

Tim Kane was nice enough to include my question in this year’s Hudson Survey of Leading Economics Bloggers (PDF). Here’s the question and the results: Judging based on post-war economic data, how do prosperous, high-GDP/capita countries compare with one another? Countries with larger government sectors have _____ growth rates compared to countries with smaller government sectors. As a group, […]

Obama-care and part time employment –Part 2

I’m seeing all types of comments on the 2013 rise in part time employment that blame it on Obama-care and that is just plain wrong. Based on unpublished BLS data so far this year federal employes forced to work part time because of the sequester account for over 100% of the increase in part time […]

Links to debate on full employment/inflation

From Steve Randy Waldman’s Interfluidity current post: Scott Sumner responds. Related — elsewhere: Tyler Cowen — Why are the high growth countries so often the high inflation countries? Kevin Erdmann — 1970s vs. 2000s: Gender Effect Edward Lambert — Has the Fed rate done a good job to balance inflation over the years? Edward Lambert […]

Will there be inflation in the next recession?

As I showed over the weekend, the jumps in inflation during the 1970’s were due to real GDP reaching the Long-run aggregate supply curve (LRAS). But underlying the inflation of the 1970’s were dynamics of growth, optimism, speculation, small business development, union bargaining power and a surging labor force from desirous baby-boomers coming of age […]