I am going to make a fool of myself by suggesting that a cryptocurrency, like that suggested by the best crypto bot 2023, might actually be useful. Bitcoin et al have negative social utility. They are pure speculative assets which enable people to gamble. Also bitcoin miners use as much electricity as Denmark. The problem […]
By Steve Roth (2016) How Perfect Markets Concentrate Wealth and Strangle Growth and Prosperity The winners have us all playing a loser’s game Capitalism concentrates wealth. Ridicule Marx and his latter-day disciples all you like (I’ll help); he definitely got that right. But capitalism is a big word with lots of meanings, and enough ideological baggage to fill […]
Lindsay Wagner reports on North Carolina’s Biggest Voucher School: When a coach at one of Fayetteville’s top private school basketball programs—a school that also happens to be the state’s top recipient of private school vouchers—pleaded guilty last summer in a Wake County courthouse to embezzling hundreds of thousands of tax withholding dollars he collected over […]
by New Deal democrat Personal spending and new home sales: restrain your enthusiasm! We got the last two significant data points of the year this morning: personal spending and new home sales. Both rose significantly. BUT there are big drawbacks to each. First of all, take a look at the personal savings rate: It just […]
I hope this simple note finds you and family in good health and cheer.
Even though most states have done little to improve access to healthcare, it is ok for states to regulate ACA and Medicaid as states are supposedly closer to their constituent’s needs. If the Federal government steps in and tries to regulate voting registration requiring ID, planned parenthood, ACA, etc. because certain state(s) give a damn […]
What is the GOP goal? A return to the “gilded age” (or worse) When right-wing Roy Moore said that the time when America was great was during slavery, he revealed something key to the current GOP members of Congress and state legislatures–their primary goal is to return to a time when owners of property held […]
The Poland Peoblem: How A Good Economy Does Not Guarantee A Good Politics This is personal and professional. My wife and I have the third edition of our comparative economics textbook now in press at MIT Press. We have chapters on transition economies, and one is on the Polish economy. The standard story is that Poland has been […]
Its almost Christmas. What seems to be different in the last couple of years is that we now have to contend with the joy of violent Christmas plots of one sort or another. Just the other day, some $#%& with a scheme to shoot up San Francisco for the holidays was arrested. Not that the […]
by Diane Coyle, Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, GDP: Falling Short (from IMF website here ) Gross domestic product, or GDP, has been used to measure growth since the Second World War when economies were all about mass production and manufacturing. In this podcast, economist Diane Coyle, says […]