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

Shortage of labor by rejecting wage offers

This posts refers to an article written by Gary Burtless, Unemployment and the “Skills Mismatch” Story: Overblown and Unpersuasive. Mr. Burtless says that businesses are complaining about a skills shortage in an environment of lots of job openings. What kind of model might describe this situation? I have one… (link to model) Labor share represents […]

Forgotten, a beautiful dog waits for a home [in the Houston area] after nearly two years in boarding

Okay, yeah, I’m at it again.  Sorry about the off-topic intrusion, but …. Anyone in the Houston area who might be interested?

Yes, there is trouble in Japan

Just yesterday I posted about how weak real wages in Japan spells trouble for Abenomics. (link) Today we see by way of Stanley White and Leika Kihara at Reuters that output in Japan might be showing recession. “Output is clearly weakening, enough to make you even wonder if the economy is OK,” said Yoshiki Shinke, […]

Output Gap not so large… just for the record

Janet Yellen said today that there is still considerable slack in the economy in terms of labor and capital. So there is less pressure to tighten monetary policy earlier. Just for the record, from my own research there is little spare capacity left… Here is my graph… Warning! The potential GDP used in the graph […]

Medicare report shows Obamacare is bending the cost curve

The 2014 Medicare Trustees Report has just been released, and it shows that the program is on noticeably sounder financial footing than it was just a year ago. One of the biggest signs of this is that the projected depletion date of the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund has been pushed back by four […]

Policy Prefs: I’m Right at the Peak of the Common Man’s Bell Curve. Where Are You?

The idea of democracy is to give the people what they want, right? Ezra Klein points us to a great study by Ray LaRaja and Brian Schnaffer examining policy preferences by political donors (5% of the population) vs. non-donors (95%). Here’s my rendition of the results: Whose preferences would you say are embodied in our current government? […]