Getting Ever More Surreal I am referring to a comment Sean Hannity made on his show earlier this evening in his monologue. The reports tht President Trump was under investigation by FBI Counterintelligence as being a possible “Russian asset” supposedly taking orders from Vladimir Putin has pushed uber Trump defender Hannity to ever more surreal […]
Flying blind The government shutdown is affecting some important economic indicators. All of the series published by the Census Bureau, including retail sales, manufacturers’ and wholesalers’ data, personal income and spending, new home sales and housing permits and starts, are not being published. It appears that GDP is not going to be published by the […]
The Key to Gentrification In the world of urban politics, there is probably no more potent populist rallying cry than the demand to halt gentrification. Activists have fought it on multiple fronts: zoning, development subsidies, permitting, rent control—every lever housing policies afford. But what if they’re mistaking cause for effect, hacking away at the visible […]
Value of the Chrysler Building and California Property Taxes The big news in New York City is that the Chrysler Building is for sale: New York City’s iconic Chrysler Building has appeared in dozens of movies and remained an Art Deco jewel of the Manhattan skyline for decades. Now, the 89-year-old skyscraper can be yours. Located on […]
I hope and trust that this will be an amusing display of my ignorance. I don’t hope to reach David Graeber’s level David Graeber: Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty […]
How Shocking Was Shock Therapy? In 2007 Naomi Klein got quite a bit of attention and mostly favorable comment for her book, Shock Doctrine. It promulgated that global elites used periods of crisis around the world to force damaging neoliberal policies derived from the Chicago School and Washington Consensus upon unhappy populations that suffered greatly […]
Good news from the employment report: workers are finally getting raises! When it comes to jobs, if there is one trend that really set apart 2018 from any prior year of this expansion, it is that ordinary workers are finally getting decent raises. Let’s start by looking at the monthly % change in average hourly […]
2018 – The Year of the Complicated Suburb, Amanda Kolson Hurley, CityLab In the past several years, a much more complex picture has emerged—one of Asian and Latino “ethnoburbs,” rising suburban poverty, and Baby Boomers stuck in their split-levels. 2018 really drove home the lesson of when Americans say they live in the suburbs (as […]
December jobs report: 2018 goes out with a bang HEADLINES: +312,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose +0.2% from 3.7% to 3.9% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 7.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: declined -70,000 […]
Can We Minimize Econogenic Outcomes? I am back from the annual ASSA/AEA meetings in Atlanta. I learned a new term that on checking I find has been around for about five years. It is “econogenic,” coined by George DeMartino, who spoke on this in a session on “Ethics and Economics” held by the Association for […]