Month: September 2014
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Liberal Economists: Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight
Jared Bernstein has offered a muscular and cogent response to my recent take-down of his CAP paper on inequality and growth. (I called it “week-kneed.”) I’d like to respond to his many excellent points in just two ways. 1. My critique is primarily of his rhetoric, not his reasoning. Progressives, IMO, should be shouting the manifest reality…
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Lefty – Libertarian Cage Fight! Get Out the Popcorn…
Matt Bruenig and Demos have thrown down the gauntlet against libertarian ideology. Trevor Burrus at Cato has picked it up. Should be worth tuning in. Matt pulls no punches. He’s emerged in the last year as one of the mediasphere’s most convincing voices for progressive ideas and policies, based (IMO) on air-tight arguments and thinking, backed by solid, well-presented facts and…
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Contra Jared Bernstein: Stagnation, Spending, and The Velocity of Wealth — Five Graphs
I’ve said many times: every economic assertion should be preceded by the words “by this measure.” For big economic questions, you need to look at lots of different measures, lots of different way, to get a feel for what’s going on. This has come home to me as I’ve considered Jared Bernstein’s ongoing takedown of…
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The One Reason Apple Hasn’t Solved TV’s Cables and Remotes Problem
How many remote controls do you have for your TV? Do you care to describe the tangle of cables and wires connecting your various components? If you’re like almost everyone I know, the answers are “at least three, probably five” and “No!” Have you had a housesitter recently? How long did it take for you to…
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Think Debt-Funded Stock-Buybacks are Pernicious? Here’s Why You’re Right
I’ve ranted about this phenomenon for a long time: Do Businesses Borrow to Invest in Productive Assets? Quoting JW Mason: “the marginal dollar borrowed by a nonfinancial business in this period was simply handed on to shareholders, without funding any productive expenditure at all.” We Need to Spur Business Investment. Yeah, Right. Quoting Floyd Norris:…
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Sense on Stilts: Eight Graphs Showing a Quarter-Century of Wealth Inequality and Age Inequality
Scott Sumner made a very important point a while back (and repeatedly since) in a post wherein he makes a bunch of other (IMO) not very good points: Income and wealth inequality data: Nonsense on stilts His crucial (and I think true) point, in my words: you can’t think coherently about inequality — especially wealth inequality — if…
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Why the Rich Hate Inflation: Because They’re Creditors?
Paul Krugman and assorted others have been puzzling at this question recently, one that I’ve been grinding an axe about for some years. For the first time, I think, Krugman’s highlighted the explanation that I keep going on about: Inflation helps debtors and hurts creditors, deflation does the reverse. And the wealthy are much more likely than…
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A Quarter Century of American Prosperity: Four Graphs
If you equate wealth and prosperity (not a crazy equation), then one of the best measures of a country’s prosperity is median household net worth. It arguably says a lot more about prosperity than various income measures. It tells you how the typical household (50% have more, 50% have less) is doing. If lots of…
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A Definition of Money Is Not Sufficient, But it Is Necessary to Understand Economies
Paul Krugman takes aim today at me (though he doesn’t know me from shinola), and others of my ilk who are at least somewhat obsessed with coming to a coherent definition of “money.” …people who spend too much time thinking about money in general — specifically, on trying to decode money’s true meaning and find the…