by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 21 – 25 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. While there have been some signs of softening in a few of the high profile metrics, overall the economy continues to remain surprisingly resilient. As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you […]
Jobless claims continue to show a sideways to an upward trend New jobless claims declined this week, but are still significantly above their recent pandemic lows, while continuing claims, seasonally adjusted, made a new pandemic low. The downward trend in claims has clearly ended for now, although whether the current trend is sideways or upward […]
Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas So the Congress struggled for months after the House passed a $3.3 trillion followup Covid relief bill, which Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked and kept blocking. House Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin kept negotiating and coming up with this or that proposal, only to mostly have McConnell […]
Here is a simple thought experiment on the use of scarce vaccine supplies. Suppose that we had tested the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines with one dose per person and discovered that they were 85% effective at preventing covid-19. However, due to an administrative error, we gave some people two doses, and when we analyzed the data it […]
As a bit of a comparison, the 2018 Distribution of Federal Payroll and Income Taxes shows 761,000 household taxpayers making up 4 tenths of 1% of all taxpayers having the highest income in the US. I am not sure if we can get it as finite as what India shows in wealth. With a population […]
Rolling Out the Vaccine This morning’s (Dec. 25) New York Times offers a panel discussion on the question of who should get vaccinated against Covid first. Broadly speaking, they take a utilitarian position: it’s interesting that none disagreed with the positions taken by panelist Peter Singer, the world’s most prominent utilitarian philosopher. And I wouldn’t either, except […]
“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” ―Roy L. Smith
MacRumors: Apple’s New Privacy-Focused Tracking Prompt Begins Appearing for iOS 14 Users As a privacy measure for their customers, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad “apps” to request permission from users to track their activity across other apps and websites for personalized advertising purposes starting early next year. iOS 14.4 should be publicly released […]
I am very sympathetic to Robert Waldmann’s argument that we should give twice as many people one dose of the new Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, at least until supply constraints are eased, instead of following the FDA approved vaccination protocol and giving everyone two doses right from the beginning. What follows is a rough way of thinking […]
Decline in personal income and spending adds to evidence of reversal of economic rebound This morning’s release of personal income and spending for November adds to the evidence that the economic recovery from the onset of the pandemic has stalled, and potentially reversed. Real personal income declined -1.3% in November, the first decline since April. […]