Tag Archives: politics

Housing: Elizabeth Warren v. John Cochrane Noah Smith has a lot of praise for the economic policy proposals from Elizabeth Warren. I’ll mention only one: With costs for shelter eating a bigger piece of Americans’ paychecks, and local government paralyzed by incumbent homeowners, the country needs a big solution. Warren’s would combine incentives for raising zoning density with increased public construction”. This is interesting in light of John...

I looks as if I might disagree with Paul Krugman for barely more than once. I admit I am following Brad DeLong (and also that I surfed there from Kevin Drum). The discussion is over what hurt blue collar US workers, automation, China or two recessions. Yang says it is automation. Krugman disagrees in a tweet thread noting that productivity growth has been slow (I do absolutely agree with Krugman that Twitter is horrible and that blogs are better). I will...

The New York Times: A Propaganda Machine for Trump The Times thinks it’s leading the forces of reason and light against Donald Trump, but it doesn’t have a clue.  Every day their front page is festooned with the latest noxious Trumpian remark, followed by paragraphs of commentary on how unprecedented it is for a president to talk this way and how appalled most politicians and political observers are.  They think Trump is making one mistake after...

Rice Prices Rising In North Korea According to nkecon, on April 30 the price of rice in the DPRK was 4070 won per kg, but as of June 25 it had risen 26 percent to 5147 won per kg, the highest in many years.  The price of corn has also sharply risen although not quite as high abovee recent levels as has the price of rice.  However, the price of pork has fallen, reflecting standard corn-hog relations, and per capita incomes appear to have fallen.  Crop...

Donald Trump – Don’t Insult Our Team at the World Cup At 3PM EDT on Friday, I’ll be watching the coverage via Fox of our great women’s soccer team playing the host team in Paris. It is only the quarterfinals of the World Cup and yet this may be the game of the entire match. Unfortunately the Idiot in Chief has been writing a lot of insulting tweets: President Donald Trump has invited the U.S. women’s soccer team to the White House, regardless of whether...

Back in April, I finished up an article for ConsumerSafety.Org called A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes. The topics covered in this as given to me by ConsumerSafety.Org were Clinical Trials, Essure, and Maternal Mortality. All of the topics dealt with women’s healthcare. Of the three issues addressed, I found Maternal Mortality to be the most compelling. I told the story of a white upper middle class couple, Lauren Bloomstein a nurse and her...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Kevin Drum Talking ’bout my generation Kevin Drum has a funny but also genuinely interesting post on how boomers are not really to blame for messing up America (he half tongue in cheek blames the silent generation). I don’t think the defensiveness is entirely an act. He does concede Now, if you want to blame boomers for welfare reform, sure. Bill Clinton was (barely) a boomer. If you want to blame...

Via Naked Capitalism: Place based economic conditions and the geography of the opioid overdose crisis By Shannon Monnat, Associate Professor, Syracuse University. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Over 400,000 people in the U.S. have died from opioid overdoses since 2000. However, there is widespread geographic variation in fatal opioid overdose rates, and the contributions of prescription opioids, heroin, and...

Trucking suggests transport slowing, but has not rolled over I have been paying particular attention to the monthly report of the American Trucking Association, to compare its performance with rail, which has been sagging since the beginning of this year. A few other people are relying on the Cass Freight Index, but since that includes international shipping and air transport, it does not exclusively measure the US economy. In April this index rose...

I’ve been on the beat of income inequality since I started blogging here.  My theory: We changed the way we make money from one of making it from producing (polishing rocks into tools) to one of making money from money.  When you can make money from moving money, you don’t need to compete.  Just buy back your stock, just collect rents, just get your tax cuts. The World Bank has a new report out on Inequality 2018.   I want to direct you to a chart that...