Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again Yet again. I grant that he did not do  it at length or present a lot of clearly incorrect nonsense.  But bash Social Security he did, using an old ruse to do so, combining it with Medicare to invoke a long term deficit danger due to the two of them together, when in fact it is well known that it is the Medicare part of that projection of future spending that leads to all the scary...

Via Naked Capitalism comes Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Originally published at VoxEU. Here is the introductory summary: Trade and international financial transactions have grown massively in recent decades. This phenomenon, also called globalization, is often described as a ‘mega-trend’. Business and political leaders never tire of repeating that ‘globalization’ is the future, that it delivers more jobs and...

Comments on Profit and Capital Yeah, I know, Marx wrote three volumes on this, and in 2014 Piketty published in English a more than 700 page book on it that ended up on the bestseller list, although neither of these resolved the long-running debates about the nature of profit or of capital, which continue to swirl.  We have seen recently someone claiming that distinguishing between retained and distributed earnings is the key to understanding profit, and...

Muhammed Bin Nayef Bin Abdulaziz Al Sa’ud Confined To His Palace In Jidda, according to the New York Times today.  So the story about the now deposed 57-year old former Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and former Minister of the Interior, Muhammed bin Nayef (MbN), putting out a video supporting his own removal appears to be phony propaganda.  The Saudis instead have been broadcasting a video of the new Crown Prince, 31-year old Muhammed bin Salman (MbS) kissing...

Sandwichman in the FT Financial Times: “The minimum wage wars are heating up: A new study fails to prove its claim that Seattle wage floor hurts workers” by Martin Sandbu, at Free Lunch on FT Alphaville First, the numerical result struggles to pass an intuitive “smell test”. As the Angry Bear blog [cross posted at EconoSpeak!] points out, employment in Seattle was booming throughout the period: average wages increased by 18 per cent (!) in the time covered by...

Dan here…I don’t usually pass along a study that has a company attached to the article itself, but thought this one might be of interest for readers. On government handouts sports, stadiums or schools is the political side of the issue. Stadiums or Schools: An Analysis of Public Expenditures What we found is that ten states have allocated public funds to fund new professional sports stadiums since 2008. This does not include state expenditures on collegiate...

Five graphs for 2017: mid year update – by New Deal democrat At the beginning of the year, I identified 5 trends that bore particular watching, primarily as potentially setting the stage for a recession next year.  Now that we are halfway through the year, let’s take another look at each of them. #5 Gas Prices One potential pressure point on the economy was gas prices, which appear to have made a long- bottom in January of 2016. As they began to rise,...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) The Seattle Study: Increasing the Minimum Wage as a Way to Boost High Income Jobs As labor market mavens all know by now, the University of Washington team chosen by the city of Seattle to evaluate its minimum wage law has issued a new report.  This one is particularly juicy since it covers the increase from $11 to $13 an hour, which moved Seattle into new territory, beyond what has been studied elsewhere. ...

Saudi Succession Shuffle A not unexpected event has just been announced: 31-year old Prince Muhammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Sa’ud has been elevated from Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia by his father, 81-year old King Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdul-Rahman al-Sa’ud, to replace his 57-year old cousin, Prince Muhammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Sa’ud.  The former Crown Prince is Minister of the Interior, a position he inherited from his father, the late...

Diane Ravitch offers more on schools in America: Here is Andrew Coulson Series on Virtues of Privatization by dianeravitch Watch libertarian Andrew Coulson’s film, now showing on some, not all, PBS stations around the nation. It was paid for by libertarian foundations that support privatization. The lead funder–the Rose-Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation– is a conduit for the Koch brothers and DeVos family foundations. http://www.pbs.org/show/school-inc/...