Some posts lately about the inflation of the 1970’s… Steve Randy Waldman, Steve Roth, Scott Sumner and me. Here is a graph of the inflation during the 1970’s… Link to graph #1.

In light of the recent discussions of inflation in the 1970’s (Steve Roth and Steve Randy Waldman), I ask… how well has the Federal Reserve done in setting a Fed rate to balance inflation over the years? Including the 1970’s… Actually very well, except for Volcker in the 1980’s. First, let me state that there […]

Steve Randy Waldman delivers another Aha! post (and a followup reply to Scott Sumner) pointing out a huge driver of the 1970s Great Inflation — the rise in the labor force: Between the mid 60s and the mid 70s, the labor force grew by 30%.* 

Mike Kimel posted American and Brazilian healthcare in 2011, but the post received a comment in 2013 that might be a interest. Anecdotal for sure, but then in political chatter anecdotal seems to be the rule. We do have readers who can compare Canadian health care to US experience…but the differences between city and rural […]

“I think this expansion of government by 400,000 to 500,000 new people that are depending on the government for health care is more nauseating than probably just about any tax increase that we can put forth simply because it is an entitlement we are not going to be able to be rein in,” Republican Michigan […]

It is good to look back at the 1980 recession and analyze what happened. First, the recession officially started in July of 1980. Be that as it may, the business cycle had already topped off in the 3rd quarter of 1978 when the economy hit the effective demand limit. Capacity utilization started falling the same […]

Ralph Hudgens GA Obamacare Obstructionist Last week Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner proudly came out as an Obamacare obstructionist, bragging that Georgia would require “navigators” – people hired to assist individuals sign up for Obamacare — to be licensed by the Georgia Department of Insurance. That was bad enough, but now it gets really ugly. Via Raw […]

Bill Clinton has become the The Secretary of Explaining Stuff for the PPACA. Maggie goes on to explain to one writer why the Kaiser Calculator is out of date as the Healthcare Exchanges come on line with real pricing. Bob The Kaiser Foundation Calculator is out of date. They created it before any of the […]

Scott Sumner makes a very good point (though my interest here is somewhat peripheral to the main thrust of his post): Government price indices don’t measure the prices that are of macroeconomic interest.  For instance in the 6 years after the housing bubble peaked the US, BLS data shows housing prices rising by about 10%, while Case-Shiller […]