Tag Archives: Featured Stories

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...

The plight of independent truckers There were quite a few TV shows out there which gave trucking a romantic style of life to live. It was a lot of hard work and not quite like what was portrayed in shows like “Cannonball” or “Movin On.” Just crossing Nebraska would put you to sleep and Cannonball did not have a truck sleeper. There is a lot of danger involved with being on the roads with trucks other than having them stop and change a tire...

Does economic growth cause unemployment?, Econospeak, Sandwichman, October 24 Usually, a question in the title of an article is a teaser and the answer is almost always “no.” Not in this case. The standard argument is that economic growth is necessary to create jobs and that unemployment results from the slowing or interruption of growth. Even advocates of degrowth or a steady-state economy assume a positive connection between growth and...

Vaccine hesitancy is a serious problem.  It is killing people and prolonging the social and economic costs of the pandemic.  One possible policy response is to make vaccination mandatory, at least in certain contexts (hospitals, schools, interstate transportation, etc.).  Libertarians frequently object to vaccine mandates in uncompromising terms.  They exaggerate the risk of vaccine side effects.  They insist on individual liberty while...

Author, Farmer, and Economist Michael Smith briefly talking returns to Cattle Ranchers and profits to meat processors and retail. The beef industry is under fire, we’ve been seeing this for years. We first saw where Smithfield has taken over whole towns for pork production, vertically integrating as much as possible, even to take a cut of the feed grain market in those towns. This provides the blueprint for a bigger industry, beef. Matt...

September jobs report: once again, two very different surveys net to a “relatively” disappointing gain As I previously indicated, two items I was particularly watching for in this morning’s report (Oct. 7) were (1) manufacturing hours and payrolls – to see if that white-hot sector was holding up in the face of supply bottlenecks, and (2) whether there were continued gains in leisure and hospitality jobs, or whether Delta had caused those to...

Updated US wealth distribution data shows how bad the Great Recession and its aftermath were, and how effective the pandemic assistance has been   The desert of new economic data this week continues today. But last week the Fed released its quarterly data on wealth distribution in the US, and it shows an important point about the efficacy of the emergency pandemic assistance. Let’s take a look. Let’s start with the raw absolute levels of...

EconoSpeak: Will Krysten Sinema Change Parties?, Barkley Rosser, October 5, 2021 I have resisted posting something like this, but while I have yet to see anybody else suggest it, this possibility has been on my mind now for several days. We have never seen to my knowledge a senator refuse to offer their views on possible resolution of a major disagreement involving money.  The contrast to Sen. Sinema is her associate in the Senate in blocking...

Democratizing Work I was a bit skeptical of the Global Forum on Democratizing Work. It seemed to me that rushing into an online conference was perhaps a bit over ambitious and misdirected for a relatively new initiative that arose out of a collective letter to the editors of newspapers. Anyway, I attended three-session today, two of them for their entirety and I was not disappointed. I mean my skepticism was not disappointed. A session on...