Tag Archives: politics

The Usual Deficit Blather from the New York Times The Times today ran a truly execrable article warning us that, once the virus has passed, we will suffer dire consequences from the runup of government debt.  As most readers know, this argument is theoretically illiterate, derived from the false comparison between household and government debt.  We’ve been through this many times before, and I have nothing to add. I do want to focus on one sentence,...

What the Index of Leading Indicators tells us about the 2020 Presidential election One of the better econometric models that I made use of back in 2016 was that by Prof. Robert S. Erickson of Columbia University and Prof. Christopher Wlezien of the University of Texas at Austria, entitled “Forecasting the Presidential Vote with leading economic indicators and the polls” The model takes two steps. First, average the head-to-head heats by the two major...

Jason Brennan has a new post up doubling down on his earlier criticism of epidemiologists and government policy in response to the COVID crisis.  I responded to his earlier blog posts here.  I am still not convinced, but there are useful lessons to be learned from going through his argument. Brennan continues to claim that epidemiologists produced bad statistical analysis, and that we should not take their advice seriously (all bolding is mine): I’ve been...

(Dan here…simultaneous and probably related is the declining testing being done currently, and the federal lack of keeping track of nursing home and other long term care facilities deaths, as this group double downs on the “re-0pening” without precaution.) Washington Post reports: If all roads in Michigan lead to the state capitol, conservative protesters on Wednesday made sure they were closed. For miles, thousands of drivers clogged the streets to...

Prairie du Chien Selects Jill Karofsky Over David Kelly! I have previously posted on the highly swingy politicsal nature of southwestern Wisconsin, symbolized by the town there at the mouth of the Wisconsin River, French-founded Prairie du Chien (named for an Indian cheif, it turns out, who was “Dog of the Prairie” in English).  It seems that how SW Wixsonsin goes, so goes the whole state, at least in 2012, 2016, and 2018. Now we can add an election in...

Trump Defunds WHO and USPS: Will Motherhood and Apple Pie Be Next? Yes, Trump is out to cut the roughly half a billion $ US contribution to the $6 billion budget of the World Health Organization (WHO).  It seems that he now sees his path to reelection to be based on blaming China for the coronavirus and the WHO for supposedly supporting China in their supposedly nefarious conduct, alloeing hin to wallow in  fit of xenophobia as well as accusations...

the total nonsense coming out of Washington D.C.? When I wake up in the morning, I retreat down stairs to the kitchen, turn the coffee pot on, and grab an oat, oat bran, and grd flax seed muffin loaded with fiber. I make these for myself (although my wife of 49 years grabs one on occasion) to combat cholesterol and add fiber to my daily diet for other purposes. In combination with extended  walks outside or on a treadmill, I maintain. Bears eat a lot of...

I am going to attempt a briefer clearer version of this post I am interested in critiquing (and mostly praising) the CARES Act and discussing what still needs to be done. I think my points (if any) are that an extraordinary unforseen crisis simplifies some issues and relaxes some constraints. I will now go by topic 1. Aid to the unemployed. There are sudddenly many more people without market income. They need help. Here I applaud the decision to give...

In the last two weeks of March and the first week of April, 2020 16.5 million new claims for unemployment were filed in the U.S. After the novel coronavirus is successfully contained some but not all of those jobs will return. The post-pandemic economy will not be the same as the economy before and to assume a return to business-as-usual economic growth would be folly. There will need to be immediate share-the-work policies along with basic income...

Trump All Over The Place On Oil Prices Indeed, are we surprised? But POTUS has reached a new level of hypocrisy on all this. So a while ago when oil prices began falling sharply, Trump bragged about how much this was going to help consumers, and he should get credit for it, of course. More recently, since WTI crude and even Brent fell below $30 per barrel (with WTI just over 20 right now, and Brent just over 30), he became worried about his pals in the...