Residential building construction and spending sound a warning for goods-producing employment – by New Deal democrat The final data point from last week that I wanted to catch up on was construction spending, and especially residential construction and spending. As reported last week, in June total nominal spending declined -0.3% in June, but is higher 6.2% YoY. The more leading residential sector also showed a -0.4% decline, and is higher...

Appointed officials have the life-saving solutions the public needs to stay safe from rising temperatures. But they don’t have political power. Zoya Teirstein . . . Once a month, roughly a dozen people enter a Zoom room to talk about what to do about this. They log on from their desks in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Jacksonville, San Antonio, and other cities across the country that are grappling with scorching temperatures. They have backgrounds in...

Today (August 9, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 3 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryEpisode 3 of the Smith Family Manga (S2) is now availableBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of...

American colleges and universities are the envy of the world. The American higher education system is an important driver of the economy.There are those who sneer at the educated. They only expose their insecurity. In JD Vance, Donald Trump has chosen a running mate who has publicly stated that he sees colleges and universities as “the enemy.” Ironic, because Vance is both a college grad and a graduate of the elite Yale law school.Your doctor? S/he...

This is the start of a series of posts or commentary on access to hospitals in rural areas. First point, since they do not have the volume a hospital in the city has, their costs make be higher. The infrastructure and labor involved has to be spread over 24 hours of availability and not just when needed. In other words, you can not turn it on and off as needed. Availability to another source of care may be time limited depending on the patient too....

Noem releases social study standards to burnish U.S. history, AP News SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Monday released a revised proposal for social studies standards in public schools that lays out a mostly shining vision of American history, after an initial draft of the standards came under heavy criticism last year from conservatives and Native American educators. The Republican governor claimed the new proposed...

Deirdre McCloskey’s shallow and misleading rhetoric This is not new to most of you of course. You are already steeped in McCloskey’s Rhetoric. Or you ought to be. After all economists are simply telling stories about the economy. Sometimes we are taken in. Sometimes we are not. Unfortunately McCloskey herself gets a little too caught up in her stories. As in her explanation as to how she can be both a feminist and a free market economist: “The market is the...

I like shooting as a sport and recreation. 

from Peter Radford – a critique of the absurdity of economics I finally read “The Accountability Machine”, the book by Dan Davies.  It’s worth the effort.  You can read it in a number of ways.  As a peon to cybernetics and Stafford Beer.  As a critique of the absurdity of economics.  As a summary of the development of management theory.  Or as a summary of the ills of neoliberalism.  It’s a mash-up of all those.  It also has the great virtue of being very readable. Chapter Six will warm...

The financial markets around the world have over the last week demonstrated, once again, that they are subject to wild swings in irrationality despite mainstream economists holding out the idea that these sorts of transactions exhibit pure rationality. Some of the capital movements are explained by a shift in the interest rate spread between Japan and the US as the former nation decided to increase interest rates modestly. That altered the profitability of financial assets in each currency...