As the Senate decides whether to send an additional $1400 to US residents, there are two macroeconomic policy issues. One is whether aggregate demand stimulus would be useful. The other is whether we should be concerned about the budget deficit. I think that the case for fiscal stimulus is medium strong and the case for […]
Who Has Been Warring Against Christmas? Where I am the Third Day of Christmas is just finishing with the news that Grinch Trump has ended his own brief War on Christmas and is signing the Covid-19 relief bill, thereby reinstating unemployment benefits for 14 million people although they’ll miss a week of payments, as well […]
Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas So the Congress struggled for months after the House passed a $3.3 trillion followup Covid relief bill, which Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked and kept blocking. House Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin kept negotiating and coming up with this or that proposal, only to mostly have McConnell […]
Here is a simple thought experiment on the use of scarce vaccine supplies. Suppose that we had tested the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines with one dose per person and discovered that they were 85% effective at preventing covid-19. However, due to an administrative error, we gave some people two doses, and when we analyzed the data it […]
As a bit of a comparison, the 2018 Distribution of Federal Payroll and Income Taxes shows 761,000 household taxpayers making up 4 tenths of 1% of all taxpayers having the highest income in the US. I am not sure if we can get it as finite as what India shows in wealth. With a population […]
MacRumors: Apple’s New Privacy-Focused Tracking Prompt Begins Appearing for iOS 14 Users As a privacy measure for their customers, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad “apps” to request permission from users to track their activity across other apps and websites for personalized advertising purposes starting early next year. iOS 14.4 should be publicly released […]
I am very sympathetic to Robert Waldmann’s argument that we should give twice as many people one dose of the new Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, at least until supply constraints are eased, instead of following the FDA approved vaccination protocol and giving everyone two doses right from the beginning. What follows is a rough way of thinking […]
I am going to write more on the topic of Covid 19 vaccines. I will argue that it would be better to give second (booster) shots only when vaccine supplies are plentiful. I think that so long as the vaccine is in short supply, people should be given one dose. I criticise the current policy […]
Conservationists were disappointed on Tuesday when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would not recommend putting the monarch on the threatened species list. It’s not that the species isn’t edging to extinction—the monarch meets criteria to be considered threatened, the service admits. But there are “higher priority listing actions.” Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor, National Geographic. […]
A comment from Kentucky State Senator Rand Paul on voter turnout. Paul who has falsely claimed the election was “stolen” from President Donald Trump (without any evidence), warned that increased voter turnout in Georgia could cost Republicans the Senate majority and urged Republican state officials to stop encouraging people to vote. Senator Paul is actually […]