Just a quick update to the productivity chart. (quarterly data, link to data) What does this graph show? When the economy is approaching the effective demand limit (red line), productivity stalls. Then a move toward an economic contraction will release a productivity increase. Note: The red line is the effective demand limit, where real GDP […]
CEOs at the forefront of the drive to slash Social Security possess personal retirement funds worth an average of $14.5 million, and three have nest eggs worth more than $100 million. That’s according to a new report by two Washington-based research groups – the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government. Fix the Debt is […]
Mr. Krugman wrote about a possible permanent slump and declining demand. He sort of offers two possible causes of it. Slowing population growth. Persistent trade deficits He does not even mention the big drop in labor share since the crisis. Yet, we see profound economists like Michael Pettis using labor share to describe the trade […]
Paul Krugman picks up on Angry Bear Robert Waldmann’s post “Why Does Fiscal Stimulus Work? ” discussing John Cochrane’s ideas on Keynesians. So some props to John Cochrane for at least trying to catch up. Unfortunately, he’s still working from the baseline assumption that people like me (and Mike Woodford, whom he really should be reading) must […]
by Linda Beale Religious freedom, taxes, and corporatism–Part II In Part I, I outlined some of the many ways in which the U.S. provides favorable treatment to religious institutions and/or their representatives, including income exclusions from the federal income tax for ministers that are unavailable to any other occupation. In this Part II, I want […]
by Dale Coberly PERNICIOUS IGNORANCE ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY A REPLY TO KRASTING Bruce Krasting in comments to Bruce’s post on Social Security made a number of claims that deserve a fuller answer than I was able to give in comments. Below in quotes are Krasting’s claims followed by my replies. I hope I am reasonably […]
Gentle Readers: Sorry to be incommunicado for so long. I’ve been working hard on a couple of projects. I built a spreadsheet for myself a few years ago to compare health-insurance plans — cost versus financial exposure/protection. I just built it out into a web app that others can use, and I’ve posted it here. […]
I had a friend who worked as a teacher in China. She made about $600 per month there 10 years ago. She said there was one question that the Chinese would ask her, even Chinese that she met for the first time. People would ask her name, where she was from, what her job was… […]
Simple explanations are always suspect. So do with this what you will. It’s my basic framework for thinking about how economies work. It of course doesn’t explain everything; the headline here is tongue-in-cheek. But I find it very useful in thinking about everything else. This thinking clashes quite definitively with traditional economic teachings. But it […]
Lane Kenworthy has done some of the best work on this subject. Read all his stuff. One great piece, on determinants of growth: Institutions, wealth, and inequality Only one institutional factor is strongly supported as a determinant of growth in prosperous countries, according to Lane’s really excellent statistical work: “corporatist concertation.” Corporatist concertation is not […]