Some history While debating the original Post Office Act, Alexander Hamilton and others argued the post should support itself and make money for the rest of the government. Others, including George Washington and James Madison, didn’t seem to care whether it turned a profit. Jonathan Trumbull, the speaker of the House of Representatives in 1792, observed that having the post subsidize the circulation of periodicals would be “among the surest means...

Dear friends, I said I wouldn't post any more on this site. But Elon Musk doesn't like me posting Substack links on Twitter. And Substack itself is a mess. The home page looks amateurish, and new posts don't even appear on it until they've amassed enough views to push down previous posts. It's an absurd way of organising a site. So I have decided in future to post links to my Substack posts here. Hopefully this will mean you can find them more easily, both on Google and Twitter. Some of my...

Read a couple of articles this morning. One by Slate and the other by Newsweek. Sneezing away here and not feeling up to par. I am not going to post them here. Just too long, even if I made the print smaller. My perspective? I thought they were both good. Maybe you will think differently. There is sense of evil in both of the articles. Ivanka Trump Instagram: The former adviser to the president has slipped back into her rose-colored bubble,...

[embedded content] Διαδικτυακή εκδήλωση της ΔΟΕ την Κυριακή 18 Φεβρουαρίου 2024, «Όροι διαβίωσης και συνθήκες εργασίας των εκπαιδευτικών. Η επίδρασή τους στην εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία». Εισηγητές: 1. Σταύρος Μαυρουδέας, Καθηγητής Τμήματος Κοινωνικής Πολιτικής του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου. 2. Βασίλης Τσάφος, Καθηγητής του Τμήματος Εκπαίδευσης και Αγωγής στην Προσχολική Ηλικία του Ε.Κ.Π.Α. 3. Απόστολος Καψάλης, Επ. Καθηγητής Τμήματος Κοινωνικής Πολιτικής του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου....

Riksbanken har gjort hundratusentals arbetslösa Många mainstreamekonomer medger att det är svårt att exakt veta var jämviktsarbetslösheten — NAIRU — ligger, men att den kan fungera som en slags ”tankeram” som kan hjälpa politiker och andra policymakare att fatta beslut och göra prognoser … Bra tankeram? Nej! Som senare tids forskning övertygande visat är NAIRU snarare att se som en slags ekonomisk-politisk fiktion som förändras utifrån den förda finans- och...

Universe Reimagined: Revolutionary Discoveries

In January, the governor of Utah signed the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act.” The law sets up a process for the state to overrule or otherwise ignore federal rules and decisions.For now, the law is just performative right-wing Republican bafflegab. While it appears to set up a challenge to the US Constitution’s “Supremacy Clause,” Governor Sandall denies this:“Our attorneys have indicated to me that the process that’s in place is...

Last week (February 15, 2024), the Japanese Cabinet Office released the latest national accounts estimates for the December-quarter 2023 – Quarterly Estimates of GDP for Oct.-Dec. 2023 (The First preliminary) – which showed that the economy had slipped into an official recession (two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth) and in the process had moved from being the third largest economy in the world to become the fourth behind the US, China and Germany. According to the media release –...

Game theory — a waste of time on a staggering scale We certainly agree that regularities or models that explain or that give heuristic value over many different cases are highly desirable. But ones that do neither are not — especially if they use up huge resources along the way. When looking at the details, the Prisoner’s Dilemma’s explanatory record so far is poor and its heuristic record mixed at best. The only way to get a reliable sense of what...

Potential outcomes and regression (student stuff) .[embedded content]