by Robert Waldmann Ryan Avent has some fun with Graeber. Click for the article but here is a summary. Graeber “The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger”. [skip] Avent (my bold) “Employers had to retain such workers—had to pay them […]
From the Washington Post: Recession’s pain reaching deep into the economic recovery–The buying power of Americans continues to be weaker than it was when the recession ended four years ago, underscoring the lasting damage wrought by the downturn, according to a report released Wednesday. Inflation-adjusted median household income has declined 4.4 percent, to $52,098, since […]
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2013/08/republicans-market-oriented-health-care.html Republicans’ “Market-Oriented” Health Care Reforms Won’t Work, Part 1 This has been a week of Republicans saying they have actual ideas for replacing Obamacare, rather than just repealing it. The centerpiece has been an article by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) detailing all the swell ideas Republicans have. In addition, a […]
A precursor is something that signals the arrival of something else. There are precursors to a recession. The trick is finding them. I want to show a precursor to the 2007 recession looking at the spending behavior of capital income. Let’s look at a flow chart for the 1st quarter of 2007. Graph of 2007 […]
Last week the 2nd quarter numbers for labor share of national income came out. Labor share ticked up a bit from the previous quarter, but pretty much exactly the same. There is a graph I use to detect if a recession is imminent. The graph gets updated as the labor share number is revised. Here […]
Brad Delong wrote today… “There are no signs in the pace of technological progress, in the level of investment, in the pace at which the American labor force educates itself, in measures of capacity utilization, in signs of upward wage pressure due to labor quality bottlenecks, or in surging commodity prices due to supply bottlenecks […]
Well here goes. I am going to claim that Paul krugman’s work on imperfect competition, increasing returns and trade was a step backwards from the earlier literature. I will attack Krugman from what is considered the left. In any case, I am definitely criticizing him for excessive orthodoxy. I base my case on the work […]
Labor and capital both receive income. How do labor and capital consume products or contribute to savings differently? How have these differences changed over the years? What can we learn from the changes? To answer these questions, I made a model based on the circular flow of the economy, where I separated labor income from […]
by Barkley Rosser via Econospeak (reposted with authors permission) Why Are We Rushing To Get Rid Of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? “How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Five: One to change the bulb and four to talk about how great the old bulb was.” I think I am turning […]
When we as US citizens use our income, whether labor or capital income, to buy a product from another country, those US dollars are remitted to a bank. Now the bank may be in the United States or in a foreign country. If the US dollars are remitted to a foreign bank, that bank pays […]