Maggie Mahar at The Health Beat Blog discusses Alzheimer’s care and the alternatives. Throughout the 20th century, most Americans saw “longevity” as a goal. If we took care of our bodies, we reasoned, we could “live longer and better.” But in the 21st century, I suspect that some of us will learn to fear “longevity” […]

Readers of my AB posts know that a recurring theme of mine is the right’s cooptation of the word “freedom” to disembody the word from actual physical freedom–e.g., from imprisonment–or from personal choice, and to instead define it as a Reagan-era Conservative Legal Movement checklist.  And that these folks achieve this by declaring it mandated by the Constitution’s […]

by Peter Dormand The Two Inequalities In the wake of Piketty, “inequality” is in.  But it comes marinated in confusion. The problem is that there are two inequalities with relatively little in common.  The one we had been arguing about for several decades is wage inequality.  Most pay has stagnated in the US, while a […]

Paul Krugman wrote today the obvious criticism against the Fisher Effect. He completely based his criticism on monetary shocks, which is a short-sighted view.  He is not thinking beyond the shocks. “And we know what happens after a positive shock to policy interest rates: output and inflation both fall.” Yes, that is obvious, but what […]

That’s the conclusion of Stuart W. Elliott in his recent paper, “Anticipating a Luddite Revival.” (Hat tip: RobotEconomics.) We’ve seen that scale of transformation before. But this one promises to be roughly four times as fast, dwarfing Luddite-era concerns: …the portion of the workforce employed in agriculture shifted from roughly 80% to just a few […]

The current Chief Actuary of Social Security is Stephen Goss and on the occasion of the publication of the 75th Anniversary issue of the Social Security Bulletin he contributed what may be the most valuable single piece you will ever read on Social Security financials. The article carried the title The Future Financial Status of […]

Back in the 90’s I sat down and chatted with a philosopher from India that was passing through my local town. He said one thing that I have thought about for years. He told me that according to Indian culture, there are 4 types of people related to the elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water. […]

Correction appended below. —- Scott Lemieux weighs in at The Week, writing that, although “Supreme Court voting is too complex to be explained by any single factor,” the “attitudinal model” – which posits that “Supreme Court votes are explained by what judges consider desirable policy” – “still contains a good deal of truth.” — Amy […]

Here is another comment on Krugman. It is exactly the maximum length he allows (and three periods are followed by single spaces to get the counter to 0 from -3 — I might as well tweet). His excellent post is here. He links to an even better post by Matt O’Brien at wonkblog. It’s depressing, […]