Spending out of income is called induced spending. Equivalently, it is known as ‘endogenous’ spending. This kind of spending rises and falls roughly in line with income. When income rises, households consume more. When income falls, they consume less. Because some spending is induced, an initial act of autonomous spending will cause a multiplied increase in new spending and new income. This is known as the expenditure-multiplier effect.... heteconomistShort & Simple 16 – The...
Read More »Timothy Taylor — Adam Smith: The Plight of the Impartial Spectator in Times of Faction
Quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).Conversable EconomistAdam Smith: The Plight of the Impartial Spectator in Times of FactionTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota
Read More »Thomas Graham — The problem isn’t Putin, it’s Russia
As relations worsen, US must realize Russia will not soon, if ever, become a liberal democracy.… Carried away by ahistorical reasoning, the U.S. believed its victory in the Cold War meant that Russia, like all other countries, had little choice but to adopt the liberal democratic free-market order that had brought prosperity and peace to the West.... The real problem is viewing this as problem. Probably no non-Western state will become a liberal democracy because it is not in accord with...
Read More »Chris McGreal: Don’t blame addicts for America’s opioid crisis. Here are the real culprits
America’s opioid crisis was caused by rapacious pharma companies, politicians who colluded with them and regulators who approved one opioid pill after another Of all the people Donald Trump could blame for the opioid epidemic, he chose the victims. After his own commission on the opioid crisis issued an interim report this week, Trump said young people should be told drugs are “No good, really bad for you in every way.” The president’s exhortation to follow Nancy Reagan’s miserably...
Read More »Bill Mitchell — Japan is different, right? Wrong! Fiscal policy works
Japan is different, right? Japan has a different culture, right? Japan has sustained low unemployment, low inflation, low interest rates, high public deficits and high gross public debt for 25 years, but that is cultural, right? Even the mainstream media is starting to see through the Japan is different narrative as we will see. Yesterday (August 14, 2017), the Cabinet Office in Japan published the preliminary – Quarterly Estimates of GDP – which showed that the Japanese economy is growing...
Read More »Marilyn Wedge Ph.D.: Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD
French children don't need medications to control their behavior. In the United States, at least 9 percent of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5 percent. How has the epidemic of ADHD—firmly established in the U.S.—almost completely passed over children in France? Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question...
Read More »Graham T. Allison — America and Russia: Back to Basics
Short lesson in strategy. Current discussions of “punishing” Russia for interference in the 2016 presidential election, or “sanctioning” Russia for destabilizing eastern Ukraine, or “countering” Russian military deployments by stationing additional U.S. and NATO troops in the Baltics, fail to ask an elementary question from strategy 101: and then what? What will Russia do in response? And at the end of the sequence of actions and reactions, will Americans be safer than before? Bismarck...
Read More »Warren Mosler — Credit check
This kind of deceleration has always been associated with recession.... The Center of the UniverseCredit checkWarren Mosler
Read More »The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — North Korea’s “not quite” ICBM can’t hit the lower 48 states
You can rest easy. The nuclear threat narrative was a hoax according to these scientists. The Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsNorth Korea’s “not quite” ICBM can’t hit the lower 48 statesTheodore A. Postol, professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT, and Markus Schiller, Robert Schmucker, engineers
Read More »Pat Lang — Large numbers of Syrians are returning home
Putting Assad's alleged Aleppo massacre aided by Russia to bed. It was disinformation.Sic Semper Tyrannis Large numbers of Syrians are returning homeCol. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency
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