Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Asymptosis: always approaching

  • Real Household Net Worth: Look Out Below?

    In my last post I pointed out that over the last half century, every time the year-over-year change in Real Household Net Worth went negative (real household wealth decreased), a recession had either started, or was about to.  (One bare exception: a tiny decline in Q4 2011, which looks rather like turbulence following The Big Whatever.)…

  • Predicting Recessions The Easy Way: Monetarists, MMT, and the Money Stock

    I have a new post up that has implications for stock-market investment, so I decided to try posting it over at Seeking Alpha, where they’re paying me a few tens of dollars for the post (plus more based on page views — not much luck so far). The post argues that year-over-year change in Real…

  • Which Countries Work Hardest? You Might (Not) Be Surprised

    Imagine you had to choose, and could choose: you can spend your whole life and raise your family in either of two equally prosperous countries. In one country people work lots of hours to attain that prosperity. In the other country people work far less. You don’t know anything else about these countries. Which would you choose? The answer…

  • Scalia’s Craven Self-Contradiction and Pettifogging Pedantry

    In his dissent to Edwards v. Aguillard, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia made a neat distinction, sidestepping the issue of “legislative intent” that he finds so troubling: it is possible to discern the objective “purpose” of a statute (i. e., the public good at which its provisions appear to be directed), (The dissent is obsessed with…

  • No: Rich People Don’t Work More

    The meme is ubiquitous, and widely documented: Rich people work longer hours. Obvious implication: they deserve what they get, right? Ditto the poor. Bunk. Why? All the research supporting that meme looks at workers, not families. It completely ignores students, the retired, and anyone else who isn’t working. Alert the media: workers work and earn more than non-workers. And, news flash: rich families…

  • American Exceptionalism Re-Revisited: OECD Taxes/GDP Since 1965

    The OECD has posted this measure for most countries for 2013, so I thought I’d update this chart. It pretty much speaks for itself. Cross-posted at Angry Bear. Related posts: More American Exceptionalism: Drowning the Baby in the Bathwater Just What Exactly Do You Mean by “Money,” Buster? #23 There is Only One Trustworthy News…

  • Darwin Wept: Pyramid Schemes, Collusion, and Price-Fixing, the Modern American Way

    The story hardly bears repeating: Pricing is the ultimate miracle of Darwinian markets. Competitors who produce goods at lower prices thrive, expand their operations, and produce more. Those who charge higher prices (for equivalent goods) are driven to extinction when sensible purchasers abandon them for their more-efficient competitors. This inexorable mechanism drives innovation, investment, and productivity,…

  • National Debt: Since When is the Fed “The Public”?

    This issue has been driving me crazy for a while, and I never see it written about. When responsible people talk about the national debt, they point to Debt Held by the Public: what the federal government owes to non-government entities — households, firms, and foreign entities. (Irresponsible people talk about Gross Public Debt —…

  • Why Liberals Keep Losing

    James Carville was certainly right: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And under Democrats (compared to Republicans), the economy kicks ass: This is GDP growth, but that kick-assness is blatant in any economic measure you look at, from job growth to stock-market returns to household income to government deficits. And it’s true over any lengthy period (say, 30+ years)…

  • Is GDP Wildly Underestimating GDP?

    The markets have been showing a rather particular schizophrenia over the last dozen or so years — but not, perhaps, the one you may be thinking of. This schizo-disconnect is between the goods markets and the asset markets, and their valuations of U.S. production. In short, the existing-asset markets think we’re producing and saving far…

  • Why You Probably Don’t Understand the National Accounts. In Pictures.

    If anyone means to deliberate successfully about anything, there is one thing he must do at the outset: he must know what it is he is deliberating about. Otherwise he is bound to go utterly astray. Now, most people fail to realize that they don’t know what this or that really is. Consequently when they…

  • How Much Was Your Ballot Worth in 2014?

    Amateur Socialist at Angry Bear asked me about how much was being spent per vote in 2014, and did the due diligence of finding me a spreadsheet showing how many ballots were cast per state. Ask and ye shall receive. Based on that data, here’s a rough-and-ready calc of how much was spent on each…

  • More Bad News for Dems: Total Total Total 2014 Spending Favored Them (Slightly)

    If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending, but you tend to get articles like this that (for fairly good reasons) don’t give you totals, rather breaking it down into campaign/party-committee spending vs SuperPAcs vs 501-whatever “social welfare organizations.” What’s…

  • How Do Households Build Wealth? Probably Not the Way You Think. Three Graphs

    Work hard. Save your money. Spend less than you earn. That’s how you become wealthy, right? That’s not totally wrong, but if you think that’s the whole story — or even a large part of the story — you may be surprised by this graph: (Note: these are not realized capital gains, which really only matter for tax…

  • Bill Gates Agrees with Me on Piketty

    He really likes the book, but expresses frustration that Piketty (emphasis mine): …doesn’t adequately differentiate among different kinds of capital… Imagine three types of wealthy people. One guy is putting his capital into building his business. Then there’s a woman who’s giving most of her wealth to charity. A third person is mostly consuming, spending a…

  • Are Poor People Consuming More than They Used To? Six Graphs

    “Poor people today have air conditioners and smart phones!” You hear that a lot. “You should be looking at poor people’s consumption, not their income. By that measure, they’re doing great.” The basic point is very true. If poor people today have more and better stuff, can buy more and better stuff each year, maybe we…

  • Amazon and Hachette: What’s Really at Issue?

    I just sent the following to David Streitfeld, the main reporter covering this dispute for the New York Times. If any of my gentle readers has an answer, I’d love to hear it: Dear Mr. Streitfeld: What I have never found in any coverage (perhaps I’ve missed it?): What is the precise dispute between Amazon and…

  • Explaining “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year”

    See update at bottom. Pavlina Tcherneva’s chart has been getting a lot of play out there: Vox/Matthew Yglesias labeled it “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year.” Scott Winship at Fortune came back at it on methodological grounds, with the headline “No, the Rich Are Not Taking All of the Economic Pie (In…

  • Again: Saving Does Not Increase Savings

    I’m reprising a previous (and longer) post here in hopefully simplified and clarified form, for a discussion I’m in the midst of. “Saving” and “Savings” seem like simple concepts, but they’re not. They have many different meanings, and writers’ different usages and definitions (often implicit or even unconscious) make coherent understanding and discussion impossible — even, often,…

  • The Pernicious Myth of “Patient Savers and Lenders”

    Banks are obviously different from households. But I think explaining two key differences goes far towards explaining why “endogenous money” theory — often pooh poohed as either confused or obvious — is important to economic thinking. The first is a dweeby accounting difference. The other, which arises from that, is very, very real. 1. When the…

  • 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…