Does Iran Have A “Poland Problem”? Maybe somewhat, but not as much as Poland does, with a “Poland problem” being where a well performing economy does not prevent political unhappiness. Iran is experiencing massive demonstrations that are heavily driven by economic complaints, even though economic performance has improved since the adoption and approval of the […]
This National Bureau of Economic research paper is behind a paywall, but the premise is up for discussion: This Paper challenges two widely held views: first that trade performance has been the primary reason for the declining share of manufacturing employment in the United States and other industrial economies, and second that recent productivity growth […]
(Dan here…Social Security is an issue that seems to generate a lot of firm beliefs and passion, as witness recent threads. It is rare that people refer to actuary material. On the other sides of the issue are people like Andrew Biggs, who is knowledgeable and smart in his arguments. I am posting this as […]
I don’t follow healthcare as much as others at this blog. I started playing around with some graphs at FRED and got a bit confused. I don’t mind being confused, but I like to clear up that confusion eventually. So perhaps someone can tell me what’s going on. First, this graph of healthcare expenditures / […]
Via Robert Waldmann via Paul Krugman: The central fact of U.S. political economy, the source of our exceptionalism, is that lower-income whites vote for politicians who redistribute income upward and weaken the safety net because they think the welfare state is for nonwhites to Noah’s opinion : A few people have noticed me tweeting a lot more about racial/cultural […]
By Steve Roth (from 2016 October 2) Democracy. Capitalism. Socialism. Choose Any Three of the Above If you don’t have a big bathtub of oil in the ground, you need all three to deliver widespread economic well-being. In the millennias-long evolution of human societies and economic systems, we find ourselves today at a pass where three systems predominate, and fitfully […]
Rep. Tom Garrett is a Republican representing Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. He is a member of the Committees on Education and the Workforce, Homeland Security, and Foreign Affairs. He presents a problem: We can’t afford to lose the energy, ideas, and vision of young people who give up their dreams of going to college because […]
Figure 1
This is well outside anything I can claim to know much about, so I can’t vouch for it other than that it sounds right to me. From an Al Arabiya article entitled All you need to know about the Iran protests in 20 points: 1 On Tuesday, December 19, the Iranian government announced a new […]