10-15 years ago, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) were a higher education fad. Universities could dispense with physical (lecture halls, heating, cooling, cleaning, security) and administrative (room scheduling) costs and just teach students online. During this period, I was associate dean for research and the Dean of our medical school brought up the suggestion that we could replace our first year medical school curriculum with MOOCs. Never mind...

How can we respond to a world of cascading disasters? Over the past past few years we’ve had to deal with all sorts of new or resurgent evils, including climate catastrophe, Covid and the global assault on democracy. That’s been made harder by the fact that our political leaders (and plenty of their supporters) have either failed to respond effectively, or have actively promoted these evils. Yet there’s nothing positive about giving in to despair, either politically or personally....

Get the full version of this audiobook: https://audiobookscloud.com/B06ZYXLS9Z Summary of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty Economics inequality, uneven concentration of wealth, and prospects of economic growth will stay amongst the top of the world's issues list. Modernization of economic growth as well as a more even spread of knowledge have played a great role in minimizing inequalities at least to a lesser extent than what Karl Marx predicted. However, the...

When the limit is reached, it forces Congress to reaffirm its willingness to spend what it is already legally obligated to spend.In my view (I am not a constitutional lawyer), the president should just ignore the debt ceiling as contradictory. Now, the president is assuming that one horn of the dilemma prevails when there is no logical reason for doing so. A constitutional argument can be made that the debt ceiling is in violation of the Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment,...

Mixed blessing, especially with the level of disorganization and divisiveness in India. Demographics leads to opportunities and challenges and population increase can increase growth but it can also present emergent challenges that are difficult to meet without high-level organization, which India has not demonstrated so far.In contrast, China recognized its demographic challenges decades ago, which was the purpose of the one-child policy. Now China growth has stabilized and even begun to...

Trade is settled either by barter, including using commodities, mostly precious metals historically, or a "safe currency" that countries are willing to hold. The USD, GBP, and EUR are considered safe currencies. Thus, an issue arises with "de-dollarization," which includes all currencies that Western powers control the use of. These currencies are considered "safe," that is, are not only default free but also relatively stable, but being subject to Western control, they put users at a...

Capitalizing the commons. Peter Dorman explains why this should not be done.Basically, actual value lies real resources ("stuff"), not in nominal terms ("money"). For example, this is suggested by the distinction between nominal (market price) and real (inflation-adjusted price). The value of stuff is based on availability and utility. The most "valuable" real resources are are vital resources. On this scale, air and water are the most valuable, although owing to their availability, they are...

Existing home sales and prices decline; plus, a closer look at multi-unit housing construction  – by New Deal democrat I will keep my comments on December existing home sales and prices brief. That’s because, even though they make up about 90% of the total market, they have much less economic impact than new home construction. They are best used to confirm trends; in this case, that housing sales have continued to decline, and prices (which...

 This is an important post by a law professor. Hat tip to Adam Tooze for pointing me toward it. Here is a key excerpt. According to Professor Menand, the Fed's sole mandate is promoting full capacity utilization and not chiefly managing inflation or running a command economy based on monetary policy decisions. The Fed has only a contributory role. Presently, it is widely assumed that the Fed has a mandate to manage the economy using monetary policy either as a replacement to fiscal policy or...

This was a year ago probably have even more now… Soon to be generating an additional $60B annual risk free munnie for doing nothing… ?13 Firms Hoard $1 Trillion In Cash (We're Looking At You Big Tech) https://t.co/VaNgozrS61 via @IBDinvestors— Patrick Morris (@patrickmorris) February 5, 2022