By Spencer With the jump in the unemployment rate today the old line that increases in the minimum wage causes teenage unemployment to rise is being tossed about.. So look at the record. We have a long record to compare the teenage unemployment rate and the minimum wage. If you look at the two series […]
by spencer Yesterday I was in line at the grocery store behind a woman buying a weeks supply for her family.Nothing unusual about that, but she had brought her own bags so she would not be using plastic and/or paper sacks that would be thrown away after one use. She had about a half dozen […]
I guess this is pick on Mankiw day. I see he is now in favor of the McCain proposal to cut the corporate tax rate to 25%. But the effective corporate tax rate was already 24.2% at the end of 2007. So I wonder which corporations he thinks should pay higher taxes? P.S. Mankiw promises […]
With the latest real GDP release it might be of interest to look at the comparison of this cycle to other long cycles. You can see for yourself the great success of the Bush trickle down economics.
I keep hearing on CNBC and reading at some blogs that if cars get better mileage that people will drive more by enough to offset the improved mileage. I can see that people could drive more because of the savings. But to argue that reducing mileage by 20%, for example will lead to people increasing […]
A few days ago in a post on Greg Mankiw we got into a discussion of stock market valuation where vtcouger wondered about using 10 year trailing earnings to evaluate stocks. vtcouger wondered why Benjamin Graham recommended using 10 year trailing earnings rather then one year trailing earnings. Remember, Benjamin Graham was writing in the […]
Just a quick chart to compare the current situation to the 1970s. When I ran the chart I did not expect such a nice match. The price series is West Texas intermediate.
Greg Mankiw reports on the difficulties US beef producers are having selling in the Japanese market. He blames it on Australian competition. Does he not know that the problem is that Team Bush will not allow American beef exporters to inspect their beef for mad cow disease? Does he really have such a low opinion […]
The industrial production report this morning was muddied by the auto parts strike. Overallmanufacturing output fell 0.8%, but excluding auto and auto parts manufacturing output fell0.4%. Because the auto output is being distorted, and will generate a snapback of output when the strike ends, manufacturing output will not be giving clear signals for months. To […]
Spatial Price Index Despite the importance of the CPI and all the discussion about it one of the things we do not have is data to compare the price of living in one city or state as compared to another.Well the Federal statisticians are working on it and the BEA just published a working paper […]