by Dale Coberly The Social Security Trustees Report is out. SS now in “short term actuarial insolvency” Much (lies) will be made of this. The Report does not lie, but it does obscure the fact that a 2% increase in the payroll tax will still solve the problem. the one tenth percent per year gradual […]
It should be worth noting that the federal deficit under Trump is already at 5% of GDP even before the Coronavirus stimulus begins. Figure 1 Interestingly, if you look at the long term record the only policy or strategy that fits the data is the Republican policy of starve the beast. That policy is to […]
Rates of testing, positive tests, and new infections by State So that I don’t lose them, I wanted to publish both the rates of testing (and positive tests) by State, as well as the (Rt) or rate of new infections for each. Both of these are as of last week. Here is the rate of […]
Where Are People Dying Most Intensively Now of SARS-Cov-2? I am putting this up because I have been hearing seeing people making claims about this that do not agree with what I have just seen at Statista for today, the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, for deaths per million according to the pandemic […]
(Dan here…a day late to AB better than not) Happy Sesquicentennial Birthday, Vladimir Lenin! (Oh, And Happy Half Century Earth Day) A half century ago today was the first Earth Day, which I paerticipated in while at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Although I did not know him well, I even met the founder of the […]
Stairway to Serfdom I posted the above chart four days ago in “From Social Distance to Social Justice” to illustrate Arthur Dahlberg’s argument about the eventual consequences of a declining labor share of income. Dahlberg was inspired by Stephen Leacock’s The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice and both Leacock and Dahlberg were influenced by Thorsten Veblen. The chart […]
Matt Yglesias has a good piece up explaining why “opening” the economy now won’t save the economy. The reason is that people will continue to avoid contact with others until the epidemic is brought under control. Simply allowing restaurants, theaters, and workplaces to open will not change this basic fact. Indeed, airlines are still open […]
Trends in US States compared by coronavirus response I mentioned over the weekend that I wanted to break out and look at some different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s the first: how are States at different ends of the restrictions and testing spectrums faring? Seven States have never even mandated lockdowns. Let’s look at […]
Does Google’s Search Algorithm Protect the New York Times? Yesterday morning, after reading the Sunday New York Times, I posted two pieces on EconoSpeak within a few minutes of each other. One was a short, cute little item (a visual grab from the paper) entitled “The Art of Juxtaposition”; the other was a longer, more substantial […]
Advocates of quickly ending the shutdowns are in the news. Mostly, because one of them is President. Like most Americans, I think reopening soon would be a mistake (and remember I am in Italy where the shut down is severe compared to any State in the USA). I’m just going to assume that reopening by […]