Real Wages Grew During Two Years of COVID-19 After Controlling for Workforce Composition Sean Howard, Robert Rich and Joseph Tracy February 15, 2022 I propose you just read it. They are quite convincing. The bottom line is that real wages increased last year (the top line is nominal wages and yes I like to take […]
I find myself disagreeing completely with Ezra Klein. This is very unusual and I feel compelled to blog about it (note you should not feel at all compelled to read this post which is self therapy). I am commenting on a twitter thread here. I am going to cut and paste a lot (because I […]
Noah Smith (and many others) is irritated by a puff piece about Stephanie Kelton and modern monetery theory MMT by Jeanna Smialak in the New York Times. I am not interested in Smialak’s article. I think that Noah sums up his critique here very well “The article then demonstrates that it has little notion of […]
The stability and growth pact regulated the fiscal policy of Euro bloc countries. It is currently suspended, because of Covid. There is an ongoing discussion of whether to reactivate it when the epidemic ends or whether to replace it with something else. I strongly advocate eliminating it and replacing it with nothing. Very very rounghly, […]
My mind goes back to 2008. I was recently tempted to ask why bad loans by banks are a public problem. I was tempted to say that the bank made the loan, so it is their problem. If enough debtors default that the bank fails, so what? Then I remember the very appealing logic of […]
This is my second comment on Noah Smith’s substack. Today he wrote about something I should know about — macroeconomics. As always, I am amazed by Noah’s knowledge (it is his former former field of academic research). I don’t know for sure if his article is available only for subscribers, so I will try to […]
I am temporarily banned by Twitter for “Violating our rules against hateful conduct.” because of the attached tweet. I don’t know if “all men must die” was interpreted as a threat rather than a simple statement of fact by the algorithm or if calling deontological reasoning confused or fanatical was considered hate speach. Maybe I should […]
“the economist who thinks he has caught what all the virologists have missed” is right here Paul. OK now I have to put my mouth where my mouth is. I do honestly think I have answers which are of interest to actual virologists. Start with the antibody, then find the antigen. This is really a […]
The italian idiom for a low blow (also for an unexpected blow) is “un tiro mancino” literally a left handed blow. Manchin hit all the other Democrats with a tiro mancino yesterday. Notably “mancino” means left handed so, hard as it is to believe, he had ancestors who were lefties as in left handed. Aside […]
I am mainly linking to this fairly important article by Dan Diamond in The Washington Post. Diamond quotes many people arguing that the US really should do more to get everyone in the world who is willing to take the vaccine vaccinated. I am going to move on quickly to how this could be done, […]