Who Needs Critical Thinking? Apparently not the US military. “Critical thinking” has long been a buzz phrase of US higher education. There was a time when I could not hear a speech by a higher administrative person at my or other higher ed institutions that did not tout critical thinking as a really important goal […]
We are probably close (~500,000) to “full employment” From time to time over the past few years I have tried to estimate how far we were from “full employment,” by which I meant the average levels of the best year in each of the past two expansions. I also estimated how long it would take […]
Rudolf Meidner, one of the unsung economics heroes of the last century, argued for solidarity wages on several grounds, one of which is that low wages subsidize less efficient firms.* Bring the bottom up, he said, and you will change the mix of enterprises and boost overall productivity. It’s just a hypothesis, but here’s a bit […]
Robert J. Samuelson Denounces Economists While often on Mondays at the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson is spouting VSP lines about how we must be responsible and cut Social Security benefits. However, today he has written on “What economists don’t know,” which comes across as a pretty big spanking for economists, among whom he does […]
Two Recent Studies, Children of Incarcerated Parents and the Long Run Effects of Student Debt Amid the blooming flowers of May, each year sees the arrival of the Papers and Proceedings volume of the American Economic Review, containing short and sometimes punchy gleanings from the previous ASSA meetings. Here are two abstracts of interest. I haven’t […]
Over a time span of forty-four years, Kenneth Burke wrote a series of four essays beginning with “Waste — or the Future of Prosperity,” published in 1930, and concluding with “Why Satire, With a Plan for Writing One” in 1974. Between those two bookends were “Recipe for Prosperity: ‘Borrow. Buy. Waste. Want.,’” in 1956 and […]
I don’t think we have entered a constitutional crisis. I think for all intents and purposes we are already past it, because of the ineffectual response to Trump’s autocratic behavior. On February 15, he brazenly abrogated Congress’s appropriations power with this diversion of funds for his “border wall.” Presidential Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency […]
Why I’m Not Going to Properly Review “The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart” I’ve been thinking about alternatives to capitalism for a long time now. I’ve taught several courses on the topic and plan eventually to write up what I think I’ve learned, so naturally I was intrigued by the new book, The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart: […]