Before I begin this blog, I beg the reader’s indulgence for such a long book review. However I considered this book worthy of such a detailed examination, due to its popularity and influence, barely three months after its appearance. I do hope the length will be justified by the service it may provide. I promise […]
Archives
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A Very Long Review of a Very Intellectually Deficient, but Very Big, Book by Thomas Piketty
09 Jun 2014
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Warning: Arcane Book Review of Work on the Nineteenth Century Economic Thought of Evangelicals
03 Jun 2014
I just finished a very interesting, but somewhat difficult, book on the economic thought of Evangelicals in Great Britain between around 1790 and 1880. Sounds really boring? Well, it was a little bit of slogging at times, but it was worth it. The author is Boyd Hilton, the title is The Age of Atonement: The […]
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Inequality, CEO Compensation and Thomas Piketty
27 May 2014
What do the three phrases in the title of this blog have in common? This is not a trick question, although some may be tricked by the rhetoric that has come from these. OK, you have had enough time to think about it. The answer is: Inequality is the “new” social justice term, median CEO […]
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Don’t Forget History
08 May 2014
Amity Shlaes has written a fine piece in National Review Online on one particular aspect of the Great Depression having to do with minimum wages (NRO, May 7, 2014). As she points out, recent research has changed the way we evaluate that event in economic history. In case you don’t remember, the dominant narrative had been that […]
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Allan Meltzer is perhaps the greatest living monetary economist; his A History of the Federal Reserve, is the definitive standard on the Fed. He was a contemporary of Milton Friedman, and a noted monetarist scholar in his own right. Discussing the Fed today, he ventures slightly off course: Broadly speaking, the Obama administration has pursued […]
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The “Point One” Percent
01 May 2014
We are all collectively the “point one percent” now. That is, we live in an economy that measured ,1% (you read that right) growth in GDP in the first quarter of 2014. Are we in for a “double dip” recession–have we really emerged from the previous one, despite fine economic definitions (and let’s be clear, […]
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For the Umpteenth Time: Income Equality
20 Apr 2014
On Good Friday I was watching a “debate” between the conservative Roman Catholic Raymond Arroyo and the Christian Left activist Jim Wallis on the subject of income inequality and the pronouncements of Pope Francis on economics and justice. The Fox News host Bill O’Reilly began with quotes from one very far left writer, Bill Scheer, […]
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Mission Creep: A Lot Like Kudzu
06 Apr 2014
If you have lived in or visited the South, you know about Kudzu, the weed that spreads along the ground in a most amazing way, the weed that never dies, or so it seems.. If it is not stopped in some way or other it continues to spread inexorably. It is hearty and doesn’t require […]
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Don’t tax me, Don’t tax thee, Tax the fellow behind the tree! Latest obfuscation on taxes by Krugman within
27 Mar 2014
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman delights in stirring the pot, and he is not only a brilliant economist (legitimately so in the specialized area of international trade), but he is also very clever. He doesn’t out-and-out lie, but he gives tidbits of truth while deliberately ignoring other facts to lead a reader to his own biased […]
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Shot In the Foot?
24 Feb 2014
Free-trade between individuals and nations is the backbone of economic growth. The more trade we have and the wider the markets for that trade, the more we will be able to develop and utilize productivity enhancing technological changes that further spur the economic engine. An article in the February 22 edition of The Economist: “How […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach