Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from David Ruccio Most of us pay the taxes we’re required to pay. That’s because there aren’t many ways to avoid them. Sales, property, payroll, or income—the tax is paid at the time of the purchase, the amount is deducted from our paychecks, or the records go directly to the government. There’s no real way around them. And we pay those taxes out of wages and salaries more or less willingly, since that’s how government services are financed. Not so for those who are able to capture the...

Peter Dorman calls attention to a NYT Upshot column by Neil Irwin about the cost of climate change. For Irwin, the question can be framed as a matter of discounting, “A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow and a lot more than a dollar in 100 years. But what discount rate you set determines how much more.” As Irwin admits, the discount rate is a “business concept.” His conclusion, then, follows exclusively from a business concept of “how, as a...

from Lars Syll [embedded content] The above vidoe is one in a series of videos where Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen present their economics textbook Principles of Economics. In a later video, ‘ideas’ are introduced into the Solow growth model. But, not with a single word does one acknowledge that this in total contradiction to the Holy Grail of their mainstream economics — the “iron logic of diminishing returns.” In Paul Romer’s Endogenous Technological Change (1990) knowledge is made the...

The charts show it all went bad around November. And it continues to deteriorate with every passing week, with the latest data showing cars, housing, and employment decelerating accordingly.Must have been some event that set it off? It was around the time of the election, but I can’t recall specifically what would set off something like this?Comments welcome!

Economics is a simple field. Just about everything can be described in terms of supply and demand. If the supply of something is scarce but the demand for it is strong, its price rises. On the other hand, if there is a lot of supply but little demand, its price will go down. Now, buyers and sellers can engage in certain strategies to weight the scales. For example, sellers of a product can band together (perhaps by buying each other out) to achieve some...

Recently the European Commission (EC) has published a “A possible roadmap towards the completion of the Economic and Monetary Union by 2025”. It is an important report. According to the report once Britain will have left the EU 85% of EU inhabitants will use the Euro. The future of these people is at stake. The report proposes: to introduce at least a bit of Eurozone level fiscal policy to introduce a kind of Eurobonds to introduce a system of unemployment insurance which, during...

The Review of Keynesian Economics and the Progressive Economic Forum are sponsoring a “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, to be held on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017, and featuring leading post-Keynesian scholars from Canada, the US, and Europe. The summer school is aims at both undergraduate and graduate students, and registration is only $25 US per person, which includes all coffee breaks.  In addition, Edward Elgar Publishers has graciously donated a number of...

The chart says it all- deceleration that started when oil capex collapsed not abetting, and the decelerating credit charts indicate much more of same coming: Highlights An unexpectedly weak employment report has put a rate hike at this month’s FOMC in doubt. Nonfarm payrolls rose only 138,000 in May which is nearly 50,000 below expectations. Importantly, April and March have been downwardly revised by a net 66,000. Average hourly earnings are also not favorable, up only 02...

While it did spike up some this week, the downtrend is still intact as per the chart: Highlights On the strong side this year, ADP is calling for a resumption of outsized employment gains, at 253,000 for private payrolls in tomorrow’s May employment report vs Econoday’s consensus for 172,000 (Econoday’s consensus has since moved to 173,500 following ADP’s report). ADP has been hitting and missing this year, making remarkably good calls for oversized strength in January and...