By chance a friend emailed me asking about the small employment share in the US. I gave him the same quick response that I did…
Economics 398 Winter 2017
Robert Gordon has posted a blog and related article Is US economic growth over? in which he argues that we’re likely back to the 18th…
The New York Times 29 August 2012 Economix blog, “Is the Fiscal Cliff a Big Deal?” by Casey Mulligan is faulty, because it misses an…
… [to] gut medicare…is economically irrelevant…because it represents an unfunded mandate… As an economist I place little credence in words, and so in all honesty…
…our problem is strong growth!?… Mitt Romney’s choice of a vice presidential is puzzling. As I see it, Paul Ryan’s primary strength is that he…
…early retirement and education aren’t “safety valves”… At 8.3%, “headline” unemployment represents 1 in 8 would-be workers without jobs. Furthermore, we know that we’re seeing…
…foreshortening the bubble by 6 months would have helped… I’d headed from Wall Street to grad school in the fall of 1980 because of the…
…Romney opposing Romneycare…I find odious… Healthcare costs are a millstone around the neck of the US economy: we spend twice as much as countries such…
…economic’s strength lies in testing perceptions against data… In recent travels I encountered the claim that Muslims are aiming to overrun the rest of the…
…policies to push home ownership weren’t responsible… Working papers are the place to go for recent research; journals are passe, too far behind the times…
…retirement is not the answer… The Financial Times has a good April 17, 2012 article looking at the sources of continued high unemployment and declining…
…it was Bush who bailed out GM — Obama forced it into bankruptcy… Steve Rattner’s blog points out a February 27th CNBS interview with Warren…
…it was Bush who bailed out GM — Obama forced it into bankruptcy… Mitt Romney now thinks the bailout bad. At first I assumed that…
Sen. Huckabee gave a speech at Washington and Lee on Friday, 10 February as part of W&L’s quadrennial Mock Convention. I caught only a portion,…
Japanese data on corporate and private savings highlight two things. The first, and here but an aside, is the tendency of the economy towards an…
Thank goodness the sanctions against Iran are like virtually all sanctions: leaky as a sieve. Seldom is there sufficient unanimity to make even relatively concerted…
The Washington Post reported [here, Dec 14th] on the budgetary crunch at Berkeley, amidst a claimed more general trend towards less state support for higher…
We know that Greece is in trouble. But what of California? It too is a sovereign entity within a monetary union. Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the…
Mike Smitka …Inaction is the Best Medicine?… The question: can we use an analogy from medicine, that we should treat the disease rather than the…
Mike Smitka …(your) Unemployment is Good! (for me)… Treason is a serious charge; I would hope that a presidential candidate would not bandy it about…