Mike Norman Economics

Oh boy I can't wait to see how big the deficit is this month so far with all the tax cuts...Lets see here in the Cash Basis DTS thru January 16th:Total Withdrawals 636B - 440B Treasury Redemptions = 196B net withdrawalsSubtractTotal Withdrawals 666B - 463B Treasury Issues = 203B net deposits196B - 203B  equals..... wait for it .... -7B   ..... ie a SURPLUS!?!?!?Say it aint so!!!!Man-o-man.... How is the deficit going to ever get to $1.5T this year as EVERYBODY has been saying?Hmmmmm... ...

USDs coming out of Apple offshore savings.  And the deficit is going to skyrocket to over $1.5T how ???? Apple to pay $38 billion in repatriation tax https://t.co/au2y0tOSD0 pic.twitter.com/lfKIBCMbCE — Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) January 17, 2018

And guaranteed the prices are in USDs...Bride prices in China have shot up, bending the country’s society and economy out of shape pic.twitter.com/wrPyHsyH3b— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 16, 2018

GDP's inventor Simon Kuznets was adamant that his measure had nothing to do with wellbeing. But too often we confuse the two. For seven decades, gross domestic product has been the global elite’s go-to number. Fast growth, as measured by GDP, has been considered a mark of success in its own right, rather than as a means to an end, no matter how the fruits of that growth are invested or shared. If something has to be sacrificed to get GDP growth moving, whether it be clean air, public...

The way China kept down the value of its currency was buy buying up government bonds with the dollars it acquired instead of just selling them in the open market. If China now decides to sell these bonds, it should mean that its currency will rise, thereby reducing the U.S. trade deficit. It's hard to see what the problem is here. Well, one (pseudo) problem I can see here is that many in the US will freak out because the yuan is getting stronger than the dollar.  If the strength of the...

I was part of an epic Twitter thread yesterday, initially drawn in to a conversation about whether the word "mainstream" (vs "heterodox") was used in natural sciences (to which I said: not really, but the concept exists). There was one sub-thread that asked a question that is really more a history of science question (I am not a historian of science, so this is my own distillation of others' work as well a couple of my undergrad research papers). Useful relative to philosophy of science...

Maybe time to consider euthanizing all the libertarians?  They are never going to change... WASHINGTON (AP) - House conservatives say there are enough Republican opponents to reject GOP leaders' plan to prevent government shutdown. — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 17, 2018

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining more traction in mainstream discourse, but the academic debate has been heating up for years. One scholar with a sympathetic but critical eye towards basic income still believes it is not the best priority for activists. Philip Harvey, a professor of law at Rutgers, wrote that a job guarantee could eliminate poverty for a fraction of the cost of UBI — $1.5 trillion less.Harvey argued in 2006 that the focus on UBI may be crowding out more realistic...

Setting the record straight.AeonThe real Adam Smith Paul Sagar | lecturer in political theory in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London

When contracts fail, the legal priority is still to pay firms like Carillion. Money is officially more valuable than life The corporations want their cut and have their cronies in government. The market is fine for cans of beans, cars, computers, Hi -Fi, etc, where the price can be evaluated easily and seen whether they are fair, but when it comes to government services even the government can get ripped off. But do governments care when they are the agents of the corporations? The...