Earned Labor Income Is a Small and Weak Lever. Unearned Property Income, and Wealth, Rule. – by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics (Clicking (once or twice) on any of the pictures should enlarge them.) Economists and pundits have been cheered of late by the labor-share increase during the first couple of years of […]
An American First. It’s the Law in WA: Accrued Holding Gains are Income – by Steve Roth originally posted at Wealth Economics Excluding these massive “economic flows” from income simply doesn’t make any sense, in basic accounting terms. Starting with the 2022 tax year, Washington State implemented a first-in-the-nation (7%) tax on accrued holding gains […]
Capital Gains: Realization Does Not Matter – by Steve Roth Wealth Economics You’re looking at your asset portfolio and decide to sell or buy some ETF shares. Click. The transaction is a dollar-for-dollar asset swap between you and your counterparty, at current market prices: M assets (bank deposits) in exchange for ETF assets, and vice versa. Equal […]
– by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics This post is in response to a very brief Bluesky exchange I had with Dan Rohde and DT Cochrane about the origins of “The Dollar” (specifically U.S.). It led me to read about the U.S. Coinage Act of 1792. Here’s the Wiki, and the Act itself — which I can’t believe […]
by Steve Roth Originally posted at Wealth Economics Please excuse two paragraphs of a personal insight up front here. I think it’s pertinent. What follows are some serious research results, just out, that I think are hugely revealing about the ways of the (economic) world. I had a visit from an old and good friend […]
by Steve Roth Originally Posted at Wealth Economics (June 2023) Recent headline inflation prints are below the Fed’s target, and falling. That news is a powerful tool for controlling expectations, but the Fed’s not using it. 1.5%. That’s the latest headline inflation rate in the U.S. per the May CPI release, and also according to […]
Who gets the money? Follow the assets. by Steve Roth Originally Published at Wealth Economics This post by Judd Legum at Popular Information (read and subscribe!) prompts me to revisit the issue of share buybacks. This passage in particular: It seems eye-popping. But is it? Even (especially?) finance and econ types don’t really understand buybacks from a […]
Progressives and social democrats should be fighting them tooth and nail, not blithely embracing them. by Steve Roth Originally Posted at Wealth Economics The spreadsheet behind the tables and graphs here is available on request. Drop me a line in the comments or elsewhere. Following the community of Socks (🧦s) or “social democrats” out there […]
Short answer: Lending, government deficits, capital formation, and holding gains by Steve Roth Originally Published at Wealth Economics I ended my last post with an apparent conundrum: “One person’s spending is another person’s income.” It seems to imply that spending and income must be equal. And since saving equals income minus spending, saving must be…zero? That’s obviously […]
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 […]