Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

“Labor Day Report: Michigan’s Paycheck Blues”

Each year the Michigan League for Public Policy issues a Labor Day report on the status of Labor with in the state. This year the outcome for Michigan Labor is no better than in previous years. 90% of Michigan Labor finds themselves making less and a further deterioration in earning power. The upper 10% of […]

The Consumption rate from Capital Income (Labor Day special)

In honor of LABOR DAY… Yesterday, I posted a graph showing the percentage of capital income that is used for consumption. It is a new graph being developed. Since yesterday, I have gone back and changed just one number that determines the consumption rate of capital income. I replaced the number for “net government saving”, […]

Looking at the Consumption rate of Capital Income

Theoretically, capital income, especially in the form of retained earnings by corporations and some capital gains would be used for saving and investment in the means of production, while labor income is used for consumption of finished goods and services from production. However, a portion of capital income is used for consumption, when the incentives […]

Walras and The Carpenter

Scott Sumner nods with approbation toward this Ychuan Wang post at Noahpinion. For which hat tip I must thank him because Wang so clearly explicates what he calls the “canonical” understanding, and illustrates so perfectly the wackiness and incoherence of of the Walrasian view: Prices don’t always adjust instantly, so we can have excess supplies […]

Links Aug. 8. 2013

Has the Shale Bubble Already Burst? (Igor Alexeev, Naked Capitalism cross posted from Oil Price) “The average depletion rate of wells in the Bakken Formation (the largest tight oil play in the US) is reported to be 69 percent in the first year and 94 percent over the first five years (37 percent and 50 […]

Angry Bear among top Influential Economics Blogs…Onalytical Indexes

Thank you contributors and readers, it’s true. We are listed at 34th this time, even missing Robert Waldmann and Kenneth Thomas mentions in Paul Krugman’s  New York Times columns this month as rankings were determined in July. Onalytical Indexes publishes their  Top 200 Influential Economics Blogs – Aug 2013 by Andreea Moldovan It’s been several months since […]

Ryan Avent Agrees: Demand Inflation Now!

DIN. We should print up lapel buttons. I suggested this campaign some time ago: This would: • Transfer relative purchasing power (hence power) from holders of financial assets to holders of real assets — from Wall Street to Main Street — and from (relatively few) creditors to (many more) debtors. • Spur both consumption spending […]

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco agrees with Spencer England

There was a flurry of articles trumpeting an effect of Obamacare on the rise in part time employment. Quite a stretch for some with ‘data’. Here the FRBSF weighs in: What’s Behind the Increase in Part-Time Work?    Rob Valletta and Leila Bengali August 26, 2013 Part-time work spiked during the recent recession and has […]

Advertising That Your Child Comes From an Upscale, Graduate-School-Educated Home and Therefore Won’t Need Financial Assistance if (When) He or She is Accepted Into Yale.

One of the really annoying (at least to me) fads among late Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, mainly, I suspect, from the Northeast and the Washington, D.C. area, is the hyphenated-last-name thing for their children.  As in, say, Alex Seitz-Wald, a Millennial blogger at the Washington Post’s The Plum Line, whose post from this morning, […]