In my last post, I gave an introduction to the massive data work underlying Capital in the Twenty-First Century, as well as two clear results from Piketty’s work. First, he showed that the optimistic Kuznets view after World War II that inequality was well on its way to being conquered was wrong, based on putting […]
by Robert Waldmann Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts Monkey Cage Match A real smack down in the Monkey Cage via Jonathan Bernstein (who summarized better than I can) A catch to Andrew Gelman for correcting an attempted but inaccurate catch by Alfred Moore, Joseph Parent and Joseph Uscinski, who thought they had caught Paul Krugman […]
Drought in Santa Cruz, CA is especially relevant because the city relies on precipitation for sources rather than the extensive systems in place for the state. There are other towns in the same dilemma, but watching policy develop to change behavior is interesting. Like bottled water in Head scratching use of water in a previous […]
Dr. Mark Harmon points us to a number of studies concerning the role of sugars in our public health arena and stunning changes over the last fifty years: This study of more than 40,000 people, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, accounted for all other potential risk factors including total calories, overall diet quality, smoking, cholesterol, […]
Put that way it sounds silly. I mean isn’t ISIS simply IN various parts of Iraq and Syria and wouldn’t US involvement in something like an all out attack on ISIS mean intervening in any number of civil wars? Well that depends on how smart your lawyers are (and I am only kind of smart […]
Earlier this week I posted a post titled “Blackie, in Wantaugh, NY.” Several people—Noni Mausa, Yves Smith (on Naked Capital), Bill H, and Dan Crawford (who made the post a Featured Story)—tried to help out. On Wednesday, Bill reported that Blackie had an approved adopter and would be picked up at the Town of Hempstead Animal […]
Janet Yellen gave a speech today at the Jackson Hole conference. Here are 3 parts from her speech that are noteworthy and somewhat ominous… 1. “For example, as I discussed earlier, if downward nominal wage rigidities created a stock of pent-up wage deflation during the economic downturn, observed wage and price pressures associated with a […]
Returning off shored money to the US was a way to create jobs politicians promised and promoted back in 2004. But not so much was the result. From Forbes: Many in Congress are argueing that corporations are leaving billions of dollars abroad at the expense of bringing it home to invest in jobs. However, says […]
Charles Reid explains a bit on some background for the news in Missouri: Quite properly, journalistic reaction to events in Ferguson, Missouri, has focused on the militarization of the police, on the role of racism in the killing of unarmed African-American men, and on the political disenfranchisement that allows communities like Ferguson to operate in […]