EconoSpeak

In any society not in a state of civil war, shame is a powerful force, perhaps the most powerful.  Individuals or organizations caught cheating, lying or otherwise doing evil, when exposed and called out, are expected to be embarrassed.  They should repent their sins and promise to make amends.  Other than pure coercion, what else can disarm those who violate the norms of society?Evolutionary biologists tell us shame is hardwired not only in humans but many other social animals.  (They may...

"In a Wednesday morning note to investors entitled "It's always a party, regardless of party," Jefferies investment analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu noted the 2006 midterm election, in which Democrats seized the House at the height of the U.S. war in Iraq. Defense companies' share prices climbed an average of 18 percent during that year."

Initiative 1631, which would have created a carbon tax in Washington State, lost by almost 12% of the vote this week.  Commentators on all sides have interpreted this as a decisive defeat for carbon pricing, making more indirect policies like subsidies to renewables the only politically feasible option.*I don’t have time for a lengthy analysis, but in a few words I want to suggest that this conclusion is premature.  I live in Washington State and saw the battle unfold first hand in real...

A curious coincidence is that the US midterm elections happened one day after the US reimposed its second round of illegal economic sanctions on Iran, with the focus on oil, shipping, and banking, along with some other sectors.  Despite all but a handful of governments  around the world supporting Iran in this matter (despite apparently two attempted assassinations of opponents of Iran's government in European nations recently) against the US out of a hope to keep Iran following the JCPOA...

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It is Robert J. Samuelson doing his usual schtick, albeit with some recognition of other issues, such as global warming and immigration.  But these are not what has his prime attention on the day before midterm elections in the US.  Moaning that "Everyone" will lose this election, his main focus is on the budget deficit, without a single mention of the Trump tax cuts.We get, "Start with budget deficits. In fiscal 2018, the gap between federal spending and revenue was $782 billion, nearly 4...

Three weeks ago, in response to the IPCC report warning that CO2 emissions had to be reduced to 45% of their 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid the possibility of global temperature rising above 1.5°C, I posted "The IPCC 1.5° C Report and the Ten-Hour Week," which offered the sketch of a plan for how to do that. I have no illusions that the IPCC or any other prestigious organization will latch on to this idea and seek to flesh it out with concrete policy proposals. In some respects, I offered the...

The  average tax rate in Venezuela is 25%. The average tax rate in the US is 26%.  Sorry, Trump, this is yet another lie by Trump, but what else is new on this? I do not know the details of Venezuelan of immigration policies, but at this point in time the issue  in Venezuela is not immigrants freely arriving and causing economic problems, but just the opposite: people leaving in massive numbers leading to crises in all the neighboring countries of Venezuela. So, bottom line: Trump not...

I made a mistake. And it's a good thing.Following up on my Running on Empty post, I wanted to give a more finely-grained analysis of climate costs relative to GDP growth, so I returned to my sources to see who their sources were and how they did their calculations. Watson et al., compiled their estimate from National Centers for Environmental Information, "U.S. Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters" and Paulina Jaramillo and Nicholas Muller, "Air pollution emissions and damages from...

A little over a year ago, Robert Watson, former chair of the IPCC, and two co-authors published a report titled "The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States." Based on trends over the past few decades, the authors estimated the current total annual cost in the U.S. of losses from weather events intensified by climate change and health damage from fossil fuel pollution to be $240 billion, which they described as "about 40 percent of current economic growth of the United States...