Rates of testing, positive tests, and new infections by State So that I don’t lose them, I wanted to publish both the rates of testing (and positive tests) by State, as well as the (Rt) or rate of new infections for each. Both of these are as of last week. Here is the rate of […]
Stairway to Serfdom I posted the above chart four days ago in “From Social Distance to Social Justice” to illustrate Arthur Dahlberg’s argument about the eventual consequences of a declining labor share of income. Dahlberg was inspired by Stephen Leacock’s The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice and both Leacock and Dahlberg were influenced by Thorsten Veblen. The chart […]
Matt Yglesias has a good piece up explaining why “opening” the economy now won’t save the economy. The reason is that people will continue to avoid contact with others until the epidemic is brought under control. Simply allowing restaurants, theaters, and workplaces to open will not change this basic fact. Indeed, airlines are still open […]
Trends in US States compared by coronavirus response I mentioned over the weekend that I wanted to break out and look at some different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s the first: how are States at different ends of the restrictions and testing spectrums faring? Seven States have never even mandated lockdowns. Let’s look at […]
Towards a modern “History of Republics”: a consideration of William Everdell’s “The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans” In view of the horrific damage that the Trump Administration has done to the American Republic, during the past year I have done extensive reading of the histories of a number of the most […]
The Art of Juxtaposition Seen in today’s New York Times in Print:
Oil prices are collapsing as West Texas intermediate is now trading at just over $11/bbl Oil prices move to the point where the marginal supply is profitable or unprofitable. In today’s world the marginal oil supply is US fracked oil. But the economics of fracked oil differs from traditional oil in that the current cost […]
The Usual Deficit Blather from the New York Times The Times today ran a truly execrable article warning us that, once the virus has passed, we will suffer dire consequences from the runup of government debt. As most readers know, this argument is theoretically illiterate, derived from the false comparison between household and government debt. We’ve been […]
I want to try to punch above my weight (and be a troll) and contest this Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, director of the medical intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital … said it will take weeks or months to get results and doctors and patients will need to wait for the results of the clinical […]
Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for April 18 Here is the update through yesterday (April 17) There are some extended comments I want to make about the pandemic, and some graphs comparing States, etc., that are best done separately, so this will be an abbreviated update. Here are yesterday’s numbers. Number and rate of increase of Reported […]