EconoSpeak

One of the endearing features of Arthur Dahlberg's Job, Machines and Capitalism was its incorporation of an elaborate diagram that illustrated his argument about technology, unemployment, war and shorter working time. A Rube Goldberg machine is a comically complicated contraption designed to perform a simple task. Goldberg began drawing his cartoon machines in 1914 and continued until 1964.A Rube Goldberg Cartoon The economic relationships Dahlberg tried to explain are indeed...

Sometime today, January 30, 2020 the plug will be pulled and the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope will cease to operate.  It has been in operation since late August, 2003.  It will be succeeded next yeat hopefully be a enew infrared space telescope named for James Webb.Serving as the Chief  Scientist for this telescope has been the main life work of my brother-in-law, Michael W. Werner, who has since 1990 worked on it out of the Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech.  He had stepped down as its...

With the conclusion of the Trump defense in his impeachment trial, the question arises as to which lie told by the defense is the worst?Sean Hannity has been emphazing four in particular.  In the first he claims that there was no linkage between military aid and investigating Bidens in the July 25 phone transcript.  But there it is in black and white that when Zelensky mentioned wanting more military aid Trump immediately goes to "I need a favor though," with that immediately followed by his...

In his preface to Jobs, Machines and Capitalism, Arthur Dahlberg explained that the economic views upon which his book was based were inspired by his reading of Stephen Leacock's The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice. The latter book's inspiration can be summarized in the sentence, "The economics of war, therefore, has thrown its lurid light upon the economics of peace." Contrary to Frank Knight's dismissive arm-waving about bibliographies and footnotes, Dahlberg did in fact cite two...

Earlier this month the New York Times ran a story about Bellingham, Washington, a picturesque town that looks out across Puget Sound to the San Juan Islands.  Bellingham is home to Western Washington University, but rational thought is in short supply when it comes to climate activism. What got the country’s attention is a proposal before the city council to require all homeowners to switch from natural gas to electric heating by 2040.  A number of cities already require new...

I keep thinking that Fox News cannot get worse, but there seems to be no bottom to how low they can go.  New lows are being exhibited in their coverage of the current Senate impeachment trial.  They are fully involved in covering up the Trump administration coverup of what Trump did regarding the articles of impeachment. Anybody getting their news on this trial from Fox will really have no idea what is going on or what the case is that the House managers of the prosecution are arguing.I am...

I am glad that the large pro-gun rights rally in Richmond on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day end without any violence as had been threatened by some people around the US.  That is nice, but it does not end the unpleasant situation legal situation that has arisen here in Virginia.  As of now 93 jurisdictions, mostly counties, have declared themselves "gun sanctuaries" where any gun control legislation passed by the Virginia government will not be enforced.  The bills currently having received...

NPR's Planet Money went to the 2020 American Economic Association conference in San Diego where they asked economists, "what is the most useful idea in economics?" David Autor appears near the end of the episode (minute 16:00) to talk about the lump-of-labor fallacy. Almost exactly 87 years earlier, on January 18, 1933, Arthur Dahlberg appeared before a Senate subcommittee to give testimony on the thirty-hour work week bill. The lump-of-labor fallacy would be a useful idea indeed if it...

There has been much hype about the signing of Phase One (and probably only) US-China trade deal.  However based on a front page story in today's Washington Post, there is not much there.  The US did not raise tariffs as planned, but tariff still remain on two thirds of the sectors that had them, although some were halved.  But numerous US sectors see no change at all and are now viewing the  situation as not likely to improve, with them suffering losses of business likely to return.  Among...

I wish to bring out some matters not getting a lot of attention in the US media.An important one of those was reported two days ago by Juan Cole. It is that apparently it has not been determined for certain that the initial attack that set off this current round of deaths when a militia in Iraq attacked an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk in which an American contractor was killed, almost certainly a matter of collateral damage although not recognized as such, was actually done by Kata'b...