“tlon Uqbar orbus tertius” is an excellent story by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, he imagines a world in which all that exists are minds and ideas. He refers to the assertion that we live in such a world made by the Reverand George Berkeley. In Borges’s wonderful Obis Tertius, objects can be multiplied if […]
As always, I am bloviating on a matter where I am not expert. I do sometimes wonder what the hell we should do with the strange human invention called intellectual property. It can be argued that it was a brilliant invention. For example the US Constitutional Convention wrote “To promote the Progress of Science and […]
Robert Waldmann has some questions and thoughts! Hi Robert, AB upgraded the way we post now. (run75441). I am going to ask someone to engage your post who has far greater knowledge than I or anyone else has. He is a Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and participated in the Moderna clinical trials. I […]
Josh Marshall has a good post about Covid 19 boosters. His site www.talkingpointsmemo.com is the other site for which I pay actual money. Unfortunately, I see the good post is for subscribers (like me) only, so I will just have to show my respect by free using the hell out of it. Josh wants a […]
I actually subscribe to a substack (even though I have a rule to never ever pay for web content). I have made 2 exceptions Talking Points Memo and Noahpinion. That written, one of the ways in which I find Noah Smith extremely stimulating is that I often, almost always, disagree with some of the many […]
Really modest and meant seriously (apologies to Swift). All Senators and Representatives get a full pension for their natural lives (equal to salary) They may never ever receive any money from any entity other than the Federal Government. No salary and all investments must be in Treasury securities (oh and nooo royalties – ever). No […]
The news is that Joe Manchin has described a voting rights compromise which he supports. Also Republicans immediately said it was unacceptable to them. This reminds everyone that there will be no bipartisan compromise on an issue where the two parties have diametrically opposite interests. If there were any Republicans who did not equate democrats […]
I am wondering about Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data. The reason is that I am interested in the extremely record high job vacancy rate of 6%, the moderately high unemployment rate of 5.8% and the moderately high hiring rate of 4.2% of employment in April (last month of data available). There are […]
First I should note that at a time when I had totally messed up my life, Larry Summers saved me from well earned unemployment. As my PhD Supervisor, he was amazingly patient about the amazing delays preceding my actually producing anything along the lines of a written document. The title is a reference to a […]
I think it is now possible to look back on the debate on the effectiveness of non-standard monetary policy at the (near) zero lower bound. I will now “mark my beliefs to market” – J B DeLong. I think it is also a mildly worthwhile exercise, because it is relevant to the current debate about […]