by Sandwichman Zero-Sum Foolery 4 of 4: Wage Prisoner’s Dilemma Soon after the wages-fund doctrine fell out of favor with economists, it was immediately attributed to trade unionists under the label of the “fixed work-fund fallacy” and then the “Theory of the lump of labour.” In denunciations of the lump-of-labor fallacy, it has become fashionable […]
by Sandwichman Foolery 1: Games Theory Gamesmanship Foolery 2: Doomsday Climate Machine Zero-Sum Foolery 3 of 4: Forecast Factory Long before the issue of anthropogenic climate change arrived on the doomsday agenda, Lewis F. Richardson anticipated climate modeling with his failed attempt to forecast weather numerically. His calculations predicted surface pressures 150 times higher than observed: […]
by Lynn Paramour (via Alternet) Is the 1% Really the Problem? “We are the 99 percent” is a great slogan, but is it distracting our attention from a sinister reality? There’s strong evidence that it’s not the 1 percent you should worry about—it’s the 0.1 percent. That decimal point makes a big difference. … The 99 […]
I recently asked if increased government debt causes increased welfare if the growth rate of the economy is greater than the safe rate of interest, even if the growth rate is lower than the risky rate of return on capital. With much help from a comment by Nick Rowe, I present an example in which […]
by Peter Dorman (originally from Econospeak) Good Jobs for Non-College Grads It’s good to see that Katherine Newman has spoken up for really investing in kids who aren’t going on to college, which will always be a substantial chunk of them, no matter what. If there’s any sort of social contract worth defending, it has to […]
Still looking for a case in which I disagree with Paul Krugman, I jump in the deep end and discuss his thoughts on international trade in “The Return of Elasticity Pessimism (Wonkish)”. That is “the belief that trade flows barely respond to price signals, and hence that devaluations don’t help alleviate imbalances.” It is amazing […]
By law the Annual Social Security Report is due by April 1. But as in every year for the last decade this deadline was missed and of course without explanation or excuse, leaving Social Security hobbyists like me whimpering. Luckily there are not a lot of SocSec fanboys and fangirls. It might be a club […]
Noah Smith posted a cartoon about how the minimum wage works. The cartoon came from Mark J. Perry at the American Enterprise Institute. Noah said that it is Econ 101ism and I totally agree. Now the cartoon is obviously a wrong way to look at minimum wage. (I use the word “obviously” to play upon […]
It’s by Zachary Karabell, who heads a hedge fund and has authored a book. The article’s title is somewhat misleading, describing the less important of the two topics the piece discusses. ____ CORRECTION: This is from the comments thread: Kevin Meyer April 8, 2016 12:33 pm FWIW, Karabell does NOT ‘head’ or otherwise run a […]
by Sandwichman Zero-Sum Foolery 2 of 4: Doomsday Climate Machine We have met the doomsday machine and it is us. The “doomsday machine” became a household word after Herman Kahn speculated about building such a device in his 1960 book, On Thermonuclear War. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love […]