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This series keeps drifting lower as personal income isn’t keeping up with price increases: And the economy itself isn’t growing real personal income the way it did pre-covid: Likewise, personal consumption is sluggish: People are saving less and less every month:

Typical post war recession type of outcome, as previously discussed: One reason for the low unemployment in the US is that for a lot of people you need a job to get health insurance:https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/jobless-claims Reported inflation will fall rapidly unless energy prices increase from current levels,which is likely given current Saudi OSP’s and EU responses to the war:

from C. P. Chandrasekhar When the world’s financial leaders met mid-April at Washington for the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the mood was one of gloom. The world economy is in disarray, with world leaders clueless as to where it is headed or what can be done to prevent a possible collapse. In the April 2022 edition of its World Economic Outlook, the IMF has slashed its 2022 GDP growth forecast of six months ago by 1.3 percentage points to...

from Lars Syll Real probability samples have two great benefits: (i) they allow unbiased extrapolation from the sample; (ii) with data internal to the sample, it is possible to estimate how much results are likely to change if another sample is taken. These benefits, of course, have a price: drawing probability samples is hard work. An investigator who assumes that a convenience sample is like a random sample seeks to obtain the benefits without the costs—just on the basis of assumptions....

from Dean Baker It is amazing how frequently policy types talk about “free trade” as though it is actually a policy anyone is interested in promoting. The reality is that what passes for free trade is a policy of removing barriers to allow low cost manufactured goods to enter the United States without restrictions. This puts downward pressure on the pay of manufacturing workers. Since manufacturing had historically been a source of high paying jobs for workers without college degrees (it...

My latest book has recently been published by Edward Elgar. The book explores the impact of neoliberal policies on the US, Europe, and the global economy. It shows how the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession were predictable outcomes of the neoliberal policy experiment, as is the emergence of global “race to the bottom” competition. […]

from Lars Syll Studying mathematics and logic is interesting and fun. It sharpens the mind. But economics is not pure mathematics or logic. It’s about society. The real world. Forgetting that, economics becomes nothing but an irrelevant and uninteresting ‘Glasperlenspiel.’ Or as Knut Wicksell put it already a century ago: One must, of course, beware of expecting from this method more than it can give. Out of the crucible of calculation comes not an atom more truth than was put in. The...

from Dean Baker   Inflation has stayed higher longer than I expected. I got that one wrong. I am happy to acknowledge my mistake, but I also want to know the reason why. This is not a question of finding excuses, I want to know why the economy is acting differently than I thought it would. The most obvious reason is the supply chain disruptions that led to the original jump in prices have lasted longer and been more far-reaching than I expected. Part of this is due to the persistence...