Tag Archives: Featured Stories

Disposable time as a common-pool resource V — Social costs and common-pool resources  The basic idea behind common-pool resources also has a venerable place in the history of classical political economy and neoclassical economic thought. In the second edition of his Principles of Political Economy, Henry Sidgwick observed that “private enterprise may sometimes be socially uneconomical because the undertaker is able to appropriate not less but more...

Disposable time as a common-pool resource II — Labour is not a commodity  Labour was conventionally regarded as a private good by both classical political economists and conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke, who argued, “labour is a commodity like every other, and rises and falls according to the demand.” The counterpoint to that view, since the early 19th century is that labour (power) is not a commodity because it has characteristics that...

by Joseph Joyce The Return of FDI Last year’s collapse in foreign direct investment was seen by many as the first stage of a period of retrenchment. Political pressure to “reshore” production, particularly of goods of national importance such as medical equipment, would cause multinational firms to rearrange their global supply chains to minimize foreign exposure. The data released for FDI in the first half of this year shows that in fact,...

Coronavirus dashboard for November 29: half of what you read about Omicron is wrong, but you won’t know which half for weeks, New Deal democrat As with any “Breaking News!” event, about half of what you read will be wrong. The problem is, nobody knows which item falls in which half. Recognizing that you need to step back a little bit and “wait a week” to see how the more breathless commentary plays out can save a lot of aggravation. In that...

EconoSpeak: Playing With The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Barkley Rosser Over the last month crude oil prices have noticeably declined from in the neighborhood of $85-86 per barrel to $78-80 per barrel. But there has been only a very small decline in retail gasoline prices, and the headlines even as of yesterday was all about “sharply rising gas prices.”  So, Pres. Biden has moved to release a record amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum...

There is no shortage of explanations for Democratic losses in yesterday’s elections.  Here is my quick partial list with a few comments.  Additions welcome. Basic structural explanations: Democratic losses are a standard mid-term loss for the President’s party.  [No doubt.  Without checking, I suspect the losses were larger than normal.] Democratic losses reflect standard retrospective voting – the pandemic recovery is going poorly, the...

There is no shortage of explanations for Democratic losses in yesterday’s elections.  Here is my quick partial list with a few comments.  Additions welcome. Basic structural explanations: Democratic losses are a standard mid-term loss for the President’s party.  [No doubt.  Without checking, I suspect the losses were larger than normal.] Democratic losses reflect standard retrospective voting – the pandemic recovery is going poorly, the...

“Democrats Introduce Plan To Fix Social Security, the way we fixed the cat,” Commenter and Social Security Expert Dale Coberly assesses the latest plan coming out of Washington DC “Congress has a new plan to fix Social Security. How it would change benefits,” CNBC in the House. Dale was one of the creators of the Northwest Plan which was submitted to Congressman DeFazio who sent Dale Coberly’s Northwest Plan to the Social Security Administration –...

Is Virginia 2021 Election Going To Look More Like 1980, 1994, 2010 Or None Of The Above?, Econospeak, Barkley Rosser, October 26, 2021 In Virginia there is an election for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and the whole House of Delegates, while the State Senate with a slight Dem majority is not up for election, is a week from today on Nov. 2, although early voting has been going on for some time.  The latest polls show a dead heat...

My Big Picture It’s a Sunday (Dan here…I put this up late), and it’s been a while since I put up some generalized thoughts on where we are, so let’s update. I’ll go in order of my optimism on the economy, COVID, and the political situation. The economy I am pretty happy about the place the economy is in right now, and for the near term future. Yes, we have inflation and supply chain issues, but we always have issues. And Q3 GDP will...