There was an insightful article by Nelson Schwartz in the New York Times on how the hollowing out of the middle class is affecting business. He brought up some great points… “The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even […]
A while back I built a model to look at the long-term economic effects of upward and downward redistribution. Posts here and here. Commenter JGF pointed out an error in the model. I’ve revised and corrected it. The spreadsheet’s here. The model is based on marginal propensities to spend out of wealth and income. Poor people […]
My last Angry Bear post generated such a wonderfully amusing comment stream that I couldn’t resist posting a follow up. One of the criticisms was that I didn’t consider Real GDP per Capita. At the risk of having anyone think I accept homework assignments from trolls, here is a look at that very thing. I’m […]
by Joseph P. Joyce (is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs ) Guest post: Shake, Rattle and Roll The selloff last week of the currencies of many emerging market countries while stock prices also declined can be seen as the result of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.” How […]
I started blogging last March. Since then, one of my most visited posts presented a model to show the progressive death of the Fed rate. Basically, the effective zone of the Fed rate is being pushed lower and lower as effective demand declines due to the decline in labor share. In the following graph, I […]
The Republican response to the President’s State of the Union message was delivered by Washington State Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. It was personal, platitude-ridden, overtly religious, twee, and devoid of policy content or anything else of relevant substance – other than a naked assertion that BHO’s policies are making life harder in myriad unspecified ways. […]
Passing along a great video from INET with its interview of William Lazonick. He talks about the ideology changes through the 80’s, stock buy-backs, labor becoming a commodity and lack of real investment for the future. Yet, he mentions another very important thing… There is an ideology that only shareholders take risk, so therefore they […]
There are quite a few shifts happening in the global and domestic economy. I have been observing for the past week. So many people are getting confused. Here is a list of concerns… China is slowing down. Some emerging markets are facing capital outflows and are tempted to raise their central bank interest rates. Argentina […]
The misconceptions embodied in this post’s headline sow more confusion in economic discussions than any others. “Saving” and “Savings” seem like simple concepts, but they’re not. They have many different meanings, and their different usages (often implicit or unconscious) make coherent understanding and discussion impossible — even, often, in writings by those who have otherwise […]
by Spencer England Last week Kevin Erdmann at the idiosyncratic whisk blog published this chart to demonstrate how minimun wages have caused teen employment to suffer. It is an interesting chart, but it suffers from the sin of omitted variables. I constantly see similar charts from those opposing the minimum wage were they seem to […]