Amazon is up first. It’s amazing that I actually have some agreement with AOC–why should we be subsidizing the dominant firm in the world? This has been interesting and illustrative as some politicians think that how you create good jobs in your area is to bribe a specific firm with special favors. Gov Cuomo and […]
Archives
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The New York Week in Political Economy
18 Feb 2019
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Its hard in my flesh not to smile at the ongoing self-destruction in the Democratic party in Virginia. I’ve long considered identity politics highly destructive to our country–essentially the Democratic Party has embraced as an organizing principle what the Federalist Papers warned as a serious danger, that of faction. And as that tendency toward faction […]
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Is this issue about race, or is it really all about politics and power? Certainly for the Democratic party, where Gov Ralph Northam is being pressured by the Democrats for an offensive photo from his law school yearbook of the 1980s, its hard to tell. I suspect Mr. Northam will be on his way soon, […]
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AOC Mania(c)!
24 Jan 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC by her fans, is the dynamic new congresswoman from NYC who openly embraces seemingly every nonsensical thing that formerly was considered a caricature of Democratic thought. And rather than being considered crazy by her party, she is lionized by the younger energetic part of the Democratic base. Sit in at […]
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The Greatest Economic Fallacy?
18 Jan 2019
Recently I had a nice discussion with an uber driver, and upon learning that I was an economic professor he asked me why I enjoyed teaching economics. I suggested that exploding economic fallacies is perhaps the most fun part of my job, since as Ronald Reagan used to quote (I think from Mark Twain originally): […]
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Dad, what’s an interest rate?
07 Jan 2019
Almost every year faculty get some list of what today’s students never knew about, such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are ancient history. Some likely don’t know about the presidency of George H.W. Bush, other than perhaps a vague knowledge that he was George W. Bush’s father and an earlier president, and none remember […]
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What do NBA superstar Stephen Curry and EPI Chief Economist Robert Scott have in common?
13 Dec 2018
Well, this week, they both spouted off nonsense, and while one was ridiculed, the other was taken seriously. Mr. Curry, for some unknown reason, decided to opine that the moon landing was fake–a product of Hollywood fantasy. For those of us that have had the privilege of hearing from Astronauts that landed on the moon, […]
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General Motors and the Lordstown Plant Closure
03 Dec 2018
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” So begins the classic line from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens continues with contrasts such as “it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,” which only adds to the feeling of simultaneous joy and heartache. Such is […]
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Market Volatility Returns–the end of the Boom?
21 Nov 2018
The index of stock market volatility (one measure of market fear) has risen in the past week, concurrent with large absolute point swings (although relatively low on a percentage basis). Markets are not as volatile as they were in October, but clearly there are uncertain times ahead, and markets generally like certainty. There are so […]
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I had the opportunity to meet a young student thinking about the economics major a few days ago, and he mentioned that he hoped to go to the UN to help the poor after graduation with development economics. We talked about the major, but I suggested he think about how the poor are most likely […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach