Month: November 2011
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#OWS is Working
In addition to sucking $4.5 billion in deposits from TBTF banks in six weeks, there’s this: Mentions of “income inequality” in the press have gone up by a factor of five. Occupy Wall Street is winning – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com. Related posts: More on American Inequality and (Lack of) Opportunity Gingrich: We’re becoming a…
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“Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.”
“Are Jobs Obsolete?” http://www.rushkoff.com/blog/2011/9/7/cnncom-are-jobs-obsolete.html
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Machines Replacing Humans: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee have a new Kindle instant book out, Race Against the Machine, that very nicely describes the issues related to technological unemployment. It’s well-written, content-packed, cogently argued, usefully hyperlinked, and well worth the $3.99 they’re asking. But I think there’s one crucial topic they don’t address, highlighted by the following. They…
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Household Net Worth by Quintile, ’62-’09 (Be Prepared to Scroll)
Source (PDF). Related posts: A Land of Magical Thinking: Becoming a Millionaire “No significant deregulation of financial institutions occurred in the last 30 years” The Myth of the “Independent” Voter
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The Poor Get Poorer
Some more eye-popping if localized numbers, these from Seattle’s insanely great local real-estate blog, Seattle Bubble. Single-family home sales, median prices in King County, Washington: Decline from Peak YOY Decline Price Quintile: to Oct. 2011 Bottom 50% 20% Low 42% 18% Median 34% 13% High 28% 11% Top 28% 5% To quote The Tim, the…
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Well Being Comes from Equality, Not GDP
“If Americans want to live the American Dream, they should go to Denmark.” Here’s the book. Related posts: More on American Inequality and (Lack of) Opportunity Republicans Create Opportunity? Yeah, Right. Guns and Gun Deaths, State by State The Strategic Value of Torture True Conservative Values, and Torture
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Is it Stupid to Get an English Degree Instead of a Business Degree?
There’s lots of chatter out there these days about how college students are getting degrees in Lithuanian Folk Dancing instead of Mechanical Engineering, and how they should stop whining about their poor job prospects. Point well taken, but I was interested to come across this interactive table, courtesy of a link from Ryan Avent. Here,…
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Yes: Machines Are Replacing Humans
Q: Does technology complement or replace human labor? A: Yes. I’ve looked at this in some depth — with much thinking help from Robin Hanson — here, here and here. After thinking and reading about it for another year or so, I’m prepared to make the bald statement: Yes, an ever-increasing number of workers in America…
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Did Fannie, Freddie, and the Community Reinvestment Act Cause the Meltdown? Uh uh.
This meme has been shredded every which way from Sunday, but given that Michael Bloomberg promulgated it yet again just this week, I felt the need to share the facts for those who might not have seen them. Let’s start with a picture: Those two bars on the left are loans that American Enterprise Institute…
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Does Self-Employment Cause Government Deficits?
I’m not really suggesting it does. It’s just that I found this graphic to be pretty eye-catching: From this CEPR PDF, “An International Comparison of Small Business Employment”. Notice the top (five out of) six. Also that the “America as the land of the independent entrepreneur” meme seems profoundly misplaced. I don’t have much more…
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Nick Rowe: “If it wasn’t an equilibrium, it would be somewhere else.”
I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve learned from reading Nick Rowe’s stuff. But still, I constantly feel that his underlying assumptions are wrong. Here’s a great example: The US economy is currently in equilibrium. It’s not a market-clearing equilibrium. It’s not a very good equilibrium. But it is an equilibrium. If it wasn’t an…
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Why Doesn’t Warren Buffett Give All His Money to the Government?
Psychohistorian’s comment over at Modeled Behavior gives the best answer I’ve seen to this question (a specious rhetorical question that — since it ignores the obvious issue of collective action — Tyler Cowen acknowledges to be worthy of a fifteen-year-old). If I say, “We should all bring a dish so we can have a potluck, 
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Are Lawyers Getting Cheaper?
Random facts: I got curious, given the glut of lawyers out there (the BLS data people are citing says 44K graduates and 30K job openings a year in the U.S.), whether fees are being driven down. The only data I can find is from Canada, and it suggests that they are — pretty profoundly: (The…