Mike Norman Economics

Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it immediate. Massive social distancing, with its accompanying job losses, stock dives and huge bailouts to corporations, raises the threat of a depression. But it doesn’t have to be this way. History...

In some earlier posts, a job guarantee is added to an otherwise condensed income-expenditure model. This enables comparisons of steady states under different scenarios akin to the typical exercises conducted in introductory macroeconomics courses. What follows is a summary of the model, bringing together aspects that are dealt with in greater depth – but disparately – elsewhere on the blog, along with brief indications of how the model can be extended to include simple dynamics and short-run...

Catching up with Brian's posts.Bond EconomicsA Comment On Ramanan's Critique Of Fulwiler's Debt Sustainability AnalysisPrimer: The Trillion Dollar Coin Ending Lockdown?Brian Romanchuk

The world is changing that is for sure. Governments around the world are promising to spend billions to address the coronavirus crisis and no-one (other than a few so-called progressives – see below) are talking about how governments will pay for the interventions. Everybody knows how. They have always known. The shams about governments not having enough money to provide adequate housing, schooling, health care, employment, other services, and a sustainable response to climate change are...

Tom back in Iowa City catching up on posting.I don't usually link to the NYT owing to the paywall and the propaganda, but this is an exception. The Times is making this op/ed available free. If you didn't catch Stephanie's opinion piece already, here it is. Congress has all the firepower it needs. It just needs to send spending instructions to the Federal Reserve, as it always does. New York Time Stephanie Kelton: Just Use ‘the Computer’ to Give People More Money Stephanie Kelton |...

Being a veqan I used to eat lots of soy products and drink soy milk. Then I read an article that I didn't realise was indirectly sponsored by the meat companies which said that soy puts dangerous levels of estrogen into men's bodies, and that it was cancerous too. Yikes! The article also said soy was dangerous for women.It was rubbish, and although soy does increase estrogen type chemicals in the body, it is not harmful at the amounts normally consumed.Anyway, Mary Enig, who wrote the...

Most people develop only mild symptoms. But some people, usually those who are older or have other medical complications, develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia, which can be fatal.Coronavirus: How eyes may play a role in its spread

CO2 is, in fact, greening the planet, and as the plants absorb the extra CO2 it's helping to keep our planet cooler too. Also, if we manage our soil better we may be able to get get it to absorb up to 5.5 billion tons of the CO2 per year, and with this more productive use of the soil we can grow more food.With all of the above, plus switching to green energy, the future may not be so bad after all.As our planet gets greener, plants are slowing global warmingEarth's Soil Could Absorb 5.5...

Can high taxes be good for business? You bet. We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous, but perhaps not in the way many Americans might imagine. What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. Our lives are just much more manageable. To be sure, our days are still full of challenges — raising a child, helping elderly parents, juggling the demands of daily logistics and work. But in Finland,...

I remember when I was young there was this new homeless guy who turned up on the street. Occasionally he would come into the pub my friends and myself drank at, but he would only ever drink half a pint. One day he saw me with the Guardian and he said he used to read it. We got chatting to him and he seemed to be a nice guy.On another occasion he was in the pub when an old friend of his turned up, who said he said he had been looking for him everywhere. He seemed middle-class and he spoke to...