Over at NBER, Helliwell et al have a paper comparing the virus elimination strategy of China, Australia, New Zealand, etc., with the more common mitigation strategy followed by most countries (footnote omitted): Our analyses show that Eliminators experienced lower death rates from COVID-19. But to what extent were these reductions in COVID-19 deaths obtained at […]

Socially Ambivalent Labour Time X (part one): Chapters 15 and 25 Capital, volume one. I started this series with the intention of comparing Dilke’s “plain leveling principle” consumption-based conception of socially necessary labour time with Marx’s theory of value founded on a production-based concept of socially necessary labour time. Two episodes and a digression later, that […]

July consumer inflation: the spike subsides somewhat, but we are close to the limit of “transitory” For the last two months, my theme has been that if the spike in inflation only lasted two or three months, it was not a big deal, but if the trend were to continue longer, it would begin to […]

Why the hell would I go back to 2019 and cite a Nancy Altman complaint about Trump’s Executive Order? Some Introduction There were already issues with Medicare Advantage in $billions of over charges as Ms. Altman cites in her commentary. Secondly, Medicare Advantage is not “single payer” like Medicare (even without creating hospital budgets, setting […]

by Joseph Joyce (Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, where he holds the M. Margaret Ball Chair of International Relations. He served as the first Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs.) China’s Outward FDI Chinese firms that want to list their stock in U.S. equity markets face a series of hurdles. The Securities and Exchange […]

Coronavirus dashboard for August 11: evidence that the Delta wave may be peaking in the earliest hit States My framework of analyzing the economy via leading, coincident, and lagging indicators continues to come in handy at looking at the course of the pandemic. At the beginning of June, I flagged that the number of cases […]

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. For the first time, there are some significant if still minor impacts on the economy showing up due to the Delta wave. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to […]

I have no special insight on any foreign policy issue, but if you’re interested in a no-nonsense defense of Biden’s policy see this post by Scott Lemieux. His key points are (my interpretation/paraphrase): Long term low-engagement occupation was not a serious option, the only choices on the table were long term escalation or pulling out. […]

Biden Follows Trump On Foreign Policy  We are now looking at a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.  It looks like the Taliban will probably take control of Kabul and thus Afghanistan in the near future. Reports already show that where they control women cannot go to school and appear in public without a veil in public […]