A few days ago I continued my regular pooh-poohing of the perils of deflation, which is coming up again because of the fall in the price of oil. As I said in that post, deflation that is associated with productivity is generally a good thing, but if its a result of a collapse in the […]
Archives
-
-
Sometimes the media gets it right– why changing government incentives are contributing to lower employment.
13 Dec 2014
I don’t know how this slipped past the editors of the NYT. We have at least a recognition that changing incentives are contributing to more people staying out of the workforce. Of course, excellent economists such as U of Chicago’s Casey Mulligan have done outstanding empirical analysis to show that changing government policies are making […]
-
Is There No American Dream? It Depends.
28 Nov 2014
Well, here is an interesting bit of supposedly bad news. An economics professor at the University of California-Davis has said he has “crunched the numbers” and found that “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England, Or pre-industrial Sweden.” He added, “That’s the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because […]
-
The country awaits the 9 p.m. decision tonight by a Missouri grand jury on whether to indict a white police officer, Darren Wilson, for the killing of a black youth, Michael Brown. Passions have been inflamed since Mr. Brown’s death, and a decision not to indict is widely feared to lead to further unrest. There have […]
-
Probably not the smartest idea to blog on the subject of race in a way that plays off Star Trek; after all, its a very serious issue and worthy of substantive discussion and debate. Unfortunately you won’t be getting any of that in the next few days in the media, and you certainly haven’t in the […]
-
Our Fragile Economy
01 Oct 2014
There is a very interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal in the Real Time Economics section. “It’s Not Ebola Sapping Nigerian Economy, but Boko Haram” reminds us of the difficulties developing nations face and the fragility of our own economic condition. While economic barometers do not indicate imminent economic failure and the United States […]
-
Hot Air in New York
22 Sep 2014
The “Climate Mongers” are at it again. Thousands of protesters were out in New York and a few other cities around the world to try to salvage their dying cause of man-made global warming and the associated “solutions” they have variously proposed. The mainstream news media were also on this story like leeches, giving it […]
-
On September 2 and 3, Cedarville University hosted theologian Wayne Grudem and economist Barry Asmus, who presented talks aimed at students and faculty on economics and human flourishing. Much of what they said related to their relatively new book, The Poverty of Nations: A Sustainable Solution. To summarize the book’s argument, the authors assert that […]
-
Musings for this Day
25 Jun 2014
The economy shrank by 2.9% so far this year, it was announced today. Recession, what recession? We were told by the economists that it was over long ago. So go on with whatever you were doing (or if you were unemployed, with what you aren’t doing) and don’t worry.
-
Piketty’s Predicament
24 Jun 2014
For those who don’t want to read the book, there is nice article by Jonah Goldberg in the June 24, 2014 issue of National Review Online. If you just woke up from a long, long nap or just returned form an isolated vactaion spot, you will remember that in April of this year, the book […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach