It’s pretty simple.
20/01/2012 • 2:12 am 0
how modern business works
11/01/2012 • 3:14 am 0
banks, what are they good for?
Why was it so politically difficult to reregulate the banks? he wondered. Why couldn’t the Administration harness the populist outrage? What good had Wall Street ever done for America? “There must be something useful in there, but it is really hard to see what,” he says. “That’s everybody’s challenge: come up with a clearly beneficial example of financial innovation without mentioning A.T.M.s, and no one can do it. If there are arbitrage opportunities and you’re able to spot them a few seconds before anybody else, you can make a lot of money, but there’s no actual social gain from doing that. We’ve tried talking to our friends in finance, and they say, ‘Liquidity, liquidity, liquidity.’ Well, there is some social loss if people are hanging on to a lot of idle cash, so the financial system, by providing liquid assets that provide a pretty good yield, is supposed to deal with that. But it turns out that, just when you need it most, that liquidity froze.”
What about Krugman himself?
If there is sadness in him at all, I think it is a tiny core of profound sadness of the kind that the Buddha understood—that we probably can’t use human rationality to make the world all better, and it would be really nice if we were able to.”
Filed under: economy
29/12/2011 • 11:32 pm 0
america: the decline years
04/06/2011 • 9:56 pm 0
the demolition of detroit
As Otis approaches the house, Lorenzo cranks open a fire hydrant. A rush of rusty water pours out. He attaches a hose and starts spraying the house to tamp down all the dust and ash that come with obliteration. The CAT thrums insistently forward, mmmmm-hmmmm-mmmmm-hmmmm, and Otis digs the grapple into the front yard, pulling it up in pieces and laying the lawn over the sidewalk to protect it from the weight of his encroaching machine. “The city’s a wreck,” says Lorenzo, “but we don’t treat it like that. We try not to crush anything we don’t have to crush.”
-link
Filed under: housing, interesting, sad
16/04/2011 • 12:55 pm 0
suckers
Agriculture was a bad deal for most of the humans who switched to it from the hunter/gatherer thing. The rich did OK, everyone else got screwed.
I’ve got to reread some of Diamond’s books, they had some good stuff.
Filed under: economy, interesting
12/03/2011 • 11:03 pm 0
when conservatives tell the truth
Kudlow, on the disaster in Japan:
““The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.”
-link
Filed under: economy, the stupid - it burns!
22/01/2011 • 2:20 am 0
where are the jobs
In a post entitled “It’s harder to pay workers well in America“, Ezra Klein claims that the reason there used to be more high-paying middle class jobs is that companies had the ability to pay more in the past, that “a lot of them just made that choice because, well, they could”:
Foreign competition has made the wage gap between different sorts of workers vast: Paying American workers a good wage while the other guy pays Thai workers a bad wage leaves you at much more of a competitive disadvantage than paying American workers a good wage while the other guy pays American workers a mediocre wage. Unions are partially in decline because of policy, but they’re partially in decline because these forces make it very hard for them to survive. Bottom line? It’s hard to pay workers well in America now, even if you want to.
It’s easier to pay them well, of course, if you have to. Without getting too deep into the methodology of the book, it’s fairly persuasive on the idea that the good jobs aren’t going away so much as they’re sorting themselves by education and ability. At the same time, the pace of educational attainment in America has slowed considerably. So the percentage of good jobs that require credentialed workers has increased, but the percentage of credentialed workers hasn’t. That’s probably a big part of this story, and it speaks to the need for much, much more investment in the workforce.
This is all kinds of wrong.
First of all, the share of profits going to workers has been decreasing – “Companies are paying less of their cash gains in the form of wages and salaries than at any time since the Great Depression” according to a post at Angry Bear.
Companies have more ability to compensate their employees now than in the past. They just aren’t doing it – not for the average employee at least.
His solution of more education is laughable. An astonishingly large percentage of college attendees learn almost nothing in college.
Getting more people to go to college will result in the people who currently do not have either the ability or the desire to go to college spending years of their lives earning nothing and learning almost nothing. It won’t result in more highly paid middle class jobs.
Filed under: economy
06/01/2011 • 6:18 am 0
why i like the writings of j bradford ledong
He believed things that were not true.
It became obvious that these things were not true.
And he admitted that he believed things that were not true, and listed them, in detail.
There are not many people on this planet that I respect.
The bankers, of course, never admit they are wrong, and are always undercompensated.
Filed under: economy
08/12/2010 • 10:03 pm 0
poor bastard will see the bats soon enough
More of the insanity that is the writings of Tom Friedman:
More than ever, America today reminds me of a working couple where the husband has just lost his job, they have two kids in junior high school, a mortgage and they’re maxed out on their credit cards. On top of it all, they recently agreed to take in their troubled cousin, Kabul, who just can’t get his act together and keeps bouncing from relative to relative. Meanwhile, their Indian nanny, who traded room and board for baby-sitting, just got accepted to M.I.T. on a full scholarship and will be leaving them in a few months. What to do?
So what do you think his answer is, in this hallucinatory allegory of the American economy, to his question of “What to do?”.
Go ahead, guess. What do you think his recommendation is?
Answer: violin lessons for the boys.
Filed under: economy, funny, the stupid - it burns!
23/11/2010 • 5:04 pm 0
the truth about california
California’s a basket case? The state has one of the highest living standards in the country, yet over the past 10 years the economy has still grown much faster, per person, than the national average. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, it’s up 15% — compared to 8.9% for the U.S. overall.
It’s grown faster than low tax neighbors like Arizona, Utah or New Mexico. It’s grown three times faster than Texas.
18/09/2010 • 4:50 am 0
student loan debt
An infographic detailing the history of student loan debt, and how that debt has become more onerous over time due to legislation.
Filed under: economy, interesting
02/09/2010 • 1:18 am 0
who was wrong about the housing bubble?
“When it comes to homes . . . many people have spent the last four years fretting that the ‘housing bubble’ might end. That is, they worried that overpriced homes might become more affordable. This is not quite as nonsensical as worrying the price of oil might fall too much, but it’s close.”
-About what you would expect from the Cato Institute.
Filed under: economy, housing, interesting
15/08/2010 • 7:59 pm 0
on progress
In order to save money, some shipping companies have adopted “super-slow steaming”. This means travelling slower than top speed in order to save money on fuel. The result is that it takes longer for these ships to carry a load of cargo from China to the US than it did in 1850.
Things don’t always get better.
Filed under: economy, interesting
15/08/2010 • 5:34 pm 0
priorities
Paul Krugman points out the silliness of the Social Security debate.
Spending on war goes from 3% of GDP in 2001 to 4.2% today.
No big deal.
Social Security is projected to go from 4.8% of GDP today to 6% of GDP in 2030.
It’s a major crisis!
Filed under: economy, politics, the stupid - it burns!
01/08/2010 • 3:39 am 0
the end of american mobility
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.
Labor mobility has nearly ground to a halt in the past two years, and policymakers are increasingly worried that the slowdown is not just a symptom of the nation’s economic struggles but also a barrier to overcoming them.
With many people locked in homes by underwater mortgages, only 1.6 percent of Americans moved between states in a one-year period that ended in March 2009 — a labor stagnation not seen in half a century.
America: you can’t move up and you can’t move out.
Filed under: economy
30/07/2010 • 12:53 am 0
communism with chinese characteristics
Is China’s growth due to adoption of capitalism?
Over at Slate, Christopher Beam lists the numerous ways in which China is still a highly centrally-planned state, and then claims that, “The irony is that the Communist leadership structure is geared toward capitalist ends. For example, regional leaders are evaluated every year based on economic growth in their domains”.
Matthew Yglesias claims that:
the approach of today’s CCP is arguably right in line with Lenin’s New Economic Policy or the ideas of Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Gorbachev all of whom certainly thought they were Communists. Indeed, if you ask me the status quo in China is pretty similar to the agenda outlined in the Communist Manifesto. Similarly, when Bean says “irony is that the Communist leadership structure is geared toward capitalist ends” he turns out to mean that it’s geared toward economic growth. Growth is something that the post-1960s far left is typically skeptical of, but Karl Marx and all the leaders of the USSR espoused the view that policy should be geared toward maximizing growth.
My knee-jerk assumption was always that China’s recent growth is due to adoption of Western-style capitalism. Then again since nothing left of Western-style capitalism is allowed into the realm of discourse in the West….
23/07/2010 • 1:29 am 0
lessons and rules about the unemployed
Intelligent design believer Ben “science leads you to killing people” Stein, who has written for the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, on the lessons we can learn from the unemployed in these times where there are 5 job applicants for every open position and 15 million people on unemployment:
The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job.
Filed under: economy, the stupid - it burns!
17/07/2010 • 5:51 pm 0
it’s hard being filthy rich
Just ask the New York Times:
Rich people are cutting back on their spending. A few poor rich people even had to buy cars the same colour as their old ones so their employees wouldn’t notice.
Rich people, being naturally ruthless, are forced to default on their mortgages more often than other people.
Rich people could never live on $500,000 a year when they have to pay $45,000 a year just for someone to take care of their children full time.
For rich people, manicures aren’t a luxury. They are “basic cleanliness“.
Rich people have a difficult time raising children: “Particularly for children of upper-middle-class and affluent families, there’s no perspective on value. When the new Range Rover pulls into the driveway, there’s no concept of how many hours of hard work went into owning that vehicle.”
Rich people worry about humiliating their unemployed children by giving them too much money.
Rich people in the top one ten-thousandth of households now have to make due with $6,000,000 or $8,000,000 a year instead of $11,000,000.
But somehow, with all of their problems, rich people still sleep better.
Filed under: economy, the stupid - it burns!
14/07/2010 • 2:06 am 0
inequality
Robert Reich discusses the underlying problem with the US economy:
America’s median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class could boost its purchasing power was to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn’t pay their bills, and banks couldn’t collect.
Each of America’s two biggest economic downturns over the last century has followed the same pattern. Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation’s total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America’s total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.
Where does he think this is heading?
When virtually all the gains from growth go to a small minority at the top — and the broad middle class can no longer pretend it’s richer than it is by using homes as collateral for deepening indebtedness — the result is deep-seated anxiety and frustration. This is an open invitation to demagogues who misconnect the dots and direct the anger toward immigrants, the poor, foreign nations, big government, “socialists,” “intellectual elites,” or even big business and Wall Street. The major fault line in American politics is no longer between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, but between the “establishment” and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to “take back America” from it.
When they understand where this is heading, powerful interests that have so far resisted fundamental reform may come to see that the alternative is far worse.
The economic status of the median American worker has been getting worse for decades. It is hard for me to imagine those workers doing anything about the situation, and hard for me to imagine that the powerful interests mentioned worry for a second that they will.
Filed under: economy
