The recent stock market fall appears to be in reaction to weakness in foreign economies, not domestic developments in the US. One measure to watch is world trade. from December to May world trade volume fell -3.4%. Interestingly, in the first five months of the 1971 decline trade fell -3.5%, essentially the same […]
Last week I made a presentation to the Colorado Assessors Association on tax increment financing (TIF) subsidies. With the organization’s permission, I am sharing the PowerPoint presentation for my talk, as well as adding this introduction. The talk begins by putting TIF in the context of subsidies generally. As a subsidy, TIF is subject to […]
In spite of a sustained lack of inflation, a large, sustained gap in the Civilian Employment/Population Ratio, an abiding lack of post-recession growth domestically, and significant underperformance (old, new, [PDF] and overall) internationally, the Fed appears prepared to raise interest rates this year. Which leaves me now wondering: With the possible exception of Robert, is […]
by New Deal democrat Do rising child care costs & stagnant wages explain the decline in the Labor Force Participation Rate ? What is driving the long term decline, shown in the graph below, in the labor force participation rate (LFPR) among prime working age adults, ages 25-54? A couple of weeks ago I wrote […]
by Joseph Joyce Greece’s Missing Drivers of Growth Analyses and discussions of Greece’s economic situation usually begin—and often end—with its fiscal policy. The policies mandated by the “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have undoubtedly resulted in a severe contraction that will continue for at least this […]
One of the major reasons I expects sluggish growth and weak earnings is the secular decline in the growth of real net fixed nonresidential investment. The dominant factor driving productivity growth is workers being provided additional capital equipment to assist them. For instance, employees of a B2B company may improve their productivity if payment solutions […]
On Friday, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) published the final version of its new rules requiring governments to make reporting on subsidies a standard part of their financial reports (known as Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, or CAFRs). Since GASB determines the content of “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,” its new rules will have to be […]
By Noni Mausa We Need To Be Kind To Be Cruel Aug 15 2015 In press conferences and TV panels, we keep hearing important people discuss budgets, entitlements, deficits, and the big knobs and levers of the economy. Those spokesmen or dignitaries who have positioned themselves as deciders, judging what everyone else deserves, never tire of telling us all about it. They imply they can control economic and political ups and downs, in order to take credit for the ups and assign blame for the downs, and sometimes they are even correct. But what they seldom do is look at how we we’re hollowing out the living world, burning here, poisoning there, concreting everywhere and trampling the rest with our billions. They like control, but they never claim they any control over core social problems like overpopulation. That would be social engineering!. That would be unnatural and cruel!. The truth is, we’re heading for a literal world of hurt, and to reverse course, however cruelly and unnaturally, we first need really solid, reliable, almost lavish social supports. It sounds nuts, eh?. Another of those lefties, laying out a buffet on somebody else’s dime? But believe me, the alternative is catastrophic. A Royal Fork for the world is a picnic by comparison to the fork we have ahead of us. We’re on the brink of disaster. There are too many of us. We use too much stuff, we make too much mess, we’ve outgrown our resources. We need social deflation– fewer people, less stuff, less waste, less war, more sharing. We need to downsize. So, who will agree to constrain themselves for the sake of a future they may not live to see?. Who goes first?
This morning on Washington Journal was a discussion with Marogt Sanger-Katz of the NYT Upshot blog. She wrote a post: No, Giving More People Health Insurance Doesn’t Save Money. It’s a controversial title for sure, but there is some interesting points that I know are often mentioned on a few email lists I’m on for […]