David Zetland  at Aguanomics asks a very basic question about our perceptions of what constitutes management: Question of the week I’m thinking that “water manager” is not the right title for people who work at drinking water utilities, irrigation districts, and other water organizations. That’s because they are not really supposed to manage water supply […]

That final paragraph really gets to one of my obsessions: that the political left and the mainstream media focus so heavily on culture-wars issues–especially regarding the Supreme Court–that the corporatocracy and other rightwing non-culture-wars interests (states’ rights!) have been having an incredible run these past years in the courts, without most people even knowing it. […]

Tzimiskes  offers some thoughts on the budget process (hat tip Run75441, and re-posted with author’s permission) Tzimiskes has been blogging for more than 3 years on economics, politics, and public policy. He holds a Masters of Political Science from SUNY Albany, and worked in New York State government for four years before returning to the […]

Via Huffington Post comes this quote: One senior administration official offered the following explanation as to why they started with a “compromise” offer. While this is not the president’s ideal deficit-reduction plan, and there are particular proposals in this plan — like the CPI change — that were key Republican requests and not the president’s […]

There is a lot of posting on the proposed budget (out next week) from our President focusing on his insistence of including the cuts to Social Security benefits as part of the 11 dimensional chess game analogy Beltway convention likes to applaud. How clever of them. Yves Smith gives us an impassioned declaration of outrage over the […]

by run75411 Re-posted from New Agenda April 2009, Bill reminds us of some of the history leading up to today: Editor’s note: We are pleased to present this guest post by Bill H, who’s known around the internet as run75441, and who can usually be found writing in his area of expertise: finance. Recently, Stanford Magazine […]

by reader Matthew McCosker I can credit two sources that have shaped my thinking on both economics, politics (I am quite apolitical these days), and finance. One is the Angry Bear blog, and the second is Warren Mosler.On the bus this morning, I was glued to a post at Warren Mosler’s blog, where he responds […]

This is the third post of  a series of posts highlighting parts of the paper by David Zetland Wageningen UR – Environmental Economics and Natural Resources Group; PERC – Property and Environment Research Center Economists Owe Ecology an Apology March 9, 2013 Part 2 from the series Economists owe ecology an apology Part 3 below: […]

Re-posted from Economist’s View, Mark Thoma points to Arnold Kling ‘Is the Demand for Skill Falling?’ who points to this this NBER paper: Is the Demand for Skill Falling?, by Arnold Kling: Paul Beaudry, David A. Green, and Benjamin M. Sand have a paper with an intriguing abstract, which says in part, Many researchers have […]

Tuition is only $1747 a year.  But then comes the other part…austerity budgets and as state support dwindles, one aspect is that creative cost shifting flourishes.  The tripling of student debt since 2004 are discussed here. And graduation rates remain flat. From the chart provided at Umass Amherst bursar’s office per semester costs are shown, excluding room and […]