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

Wage Growth Is Declining Across Sectors, but Not at the Same Rate

This particular graph was pulled from an April 2024 Morning Star article. The source of it being the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It depicts wage growth before during and after the Pandemic. In particular I believe the government did quite well in providing for and protecting its citizens during the pandemic when many people could […]

Drone Swarms

Drones are changing warfare. They are cheap and deadly. I am thinking about their use in stopping a marine invasion. The reason is that I am concerned that it is not clear enough to Xi JinPing that an invasion of Taiwan would be a huge error. The problem with anti-ship drones is that they are […]

A Natalist, Nativist, Nationalist Case for the Child Tax Credit

One of the policies with the greatest effect on poverty is the ild tax credit (expanded and made fully refundable by the American Reesue Plan). It caused a 44% reduction of child poverty. UNfortunately it was a tempory one year program (approptiate for stimulus bu not for an always needed prgram). It was not renewed and there […]

Good news on production is overshadowed by the yellow caution flag of flagging real retail sales

 – by New Deal democrat There was good news and not so good news in this morning’s two important data releases.  I’ll start with the good news. Both total industrial production and its manufacturing component increased a sharp 0.9% in May. Even after downward revisions of -0.4% in March and -0.3% in April, both were […]

Ten Fundamental Economic (Mis)understandings

It’s all about the words . . . by Steve Roth Originally Published at Wealth Economics This article was first published on Cameron Murray’s great Fresh Economic Thinking. It’s slightly revised here. Maybe I’m just dense, but when I started studying economics roughly twenty years ago, I immediately ran into a bunch of basic concepts that […]

Are the conservative Justices playing politics?

Probably, and that’s bad for straightforwardly political reasons.  Arrogant, naively moralistic Justices would be much less effective. Last week the conservative court preserved access to the critical abortion drug mifepristone.  But they relied on a procedural technicality and thus preserved their ability to limit use of the drug after the upcoming election.  Refusing to reach […]

Swiss summit kick-starts Ukraine peace process

I have following the SWI for a period of time. When I get a newspaper, it makes for some interesting read. This particular article discusses a potential meeting of ninety countries. The peace process was initiated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asking the Swiss to initiate such a conference. I can not imagine what he […]

Climate adoptation model

by David Zetland The one-handed economist Humans are not doing enough mitigation to slow — let alone reverse — climate change chaos. Average global temperatures are now +1.xxC, far above the 2015 Paris Agreement’s target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to […]

Overreacting to Inflation While the Labor Market Cools

Post-June FOMC: By Overreacting Hawkishly, the Fed Risks Being Behind the Ball by Preston Mui employ america org The simple fact as seen in a longer-run view, inflation has fallen greatly. Whether you start from its peak at 5.6% in February 2022 or 4.2% when the Fed raised rates to the current level, core PCE inflation—which […]

Immigration and the housing market freeze are making the “last mile” of disinflation harder, not the Phillips Curve

If you look at Part 1 and Part 2 of The Demographic Outlook: 2024 to 2054 CBO projections. The estimation of Net Immigration varies anywhere from 2.7 to 3.3 million to the US in 2024. In Part 1, of CBO’s current estimates, net immigration is larger than the agency estimated last year, by 0.7 million people […]