The disastrous German Emperor who was a doppelganger to Donald Trump: Kaiser Wilhelm You know the drill. It’s Sunday, so I write about whatever else is on my mind. I am presently reading Miranda Carter’s “George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm,” her 2009 biography of the three grandchildren of Queen Victoria who were respectively, the King of […]
The Wage[s]-Lump Doctrine — still dogma after all these years “The wage-fund doctrine was the quintessential product of what Marx termed vulgar political economy; a dogma concealing real economic relations, on the one hand, and justifying them, on the other. It was a transparent effort to disarm the working-class movement, and an attempt (largely successful) […]
This post “America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization” by Matthew Yglesias is brilliant (even though he is mainly agreeing with the prior brilliant article by Scott Gilmore “Trade sanctions against America won’t work. Sanctioning Trump himself might.” The proposal is so brilliant and the case for it […]
Brief JOLTS update I’m still traveling, so this will be a quick update. In re yesterday’s JOLTS report (June 7), the main take seems to be that job openings were higher than the total number of unemployed, so presumably they could all be hired and we’d have actual full employment next month, right? I don’t […]
AP Exaggerates Social Security Problems Dean Baker at Beat-the-Press has pointed out (sorry, not able to link to it) that Associated Press put out a tweet that presents an essentially hysterical story about future prospects for Social Security following the recent release of the Trustees. This report says that as of 2026 Medicare and as […]
by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY TRUSTEES REPORT: There is yet time, brother. But not much. The Social Security Trustees have issued their annual report. It is not much changed from last year. In fact it is a little better. Last year’s Report projected that by this year Social Security would have reached “short term financial inadequacy.” […]
by Joseph Joyce The Spillover Effects of Rising U.S. Interest Rates U.S. interest rates have been rising, and most likely will continue to do so. The target level of the Federal Funds rate, currently at 1.75%, is expected to be raised at the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. The yield on 10-year U.S. […]
Wage growth: is the dam finally breaking? [Apologies for the light posting: I’ve been traveling, and there isn’t a lot of news this week.] A couple of months ago I wrote that raising wages may have become a “taboo,” i.e., that in some cases employers may be refusing to raising wages, even though it may be […]
By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) The shares of income going to “capital” and “labor” are vexed issues. How much is received for doing work, and how much is unearned “property income”— interest, dividends, etc.? For a long time, economists thought these relative shares stayed roughly unchanged over time. But since the 70s, and especially sincely […]