Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Category: Politics

  • Wealth and the National Accounts: Response to Matthew Klein

    I’m both abashed and delighted that the truly stand-out econ writer Matthew Klein has offered wonderfully fulsome praise of one of my pieces, Why Economists Don’t Know How to Think about Wealth, and some very interesting discussion as well. Some responses here. Please excuse me if I repeat some of the points from the first article. >His…

  • Liberals Getting It Wrong on the Job Guarantee

    I’ve been quite troubled lately by voices I’ve been hearing from my compatriots on the Left discussing the Job Guarantee — especially in relation to an alternative, Universal Basic Income. A new Jacobin article by Mark Paul, William Darity Jr., and Darrick Hamilton displays several of the aspects that make me uncomfortable. Get the Math Right. Right off the bat,…

  • My Letter to the Fed: Stop Misrepresenting the National Debt

    The Fed data portal, Fred, just posted a blog item that I take exception to, “suggested” by Christian Zimmermann, Assistant Vice President of Research Information Services. Here’s my response. Dear Mr. Zimmerman: I’m pleased to see that this post focuses on the interest burden of the federal debt. It’s an important measure that doesn’t get…

  • Economists Agree: Democratic Presidents are Better at Making Us Rich. Eight Reasons Why.

    In 2013, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson — no wild-eyed liberals, they — asked a very important question: Why has the U.S. economy performed better under Democratic than Republican presidents, “almost regardless of how one measures performance”? Start with their “performed better” assertion: it’s uncontestable. While you can easily cherry-pick brief periods and economic measures…

  • How Perfect Markets Concentrate Wealth and Strangle Growth and Prosperity

    Capitalism concentrates wealth. Ridicule Marx and his latter-day disciples all you like (I’ll help); he definitely got that right. But capitalism is a big word with lots of meanings, and enough ideological baggage to fill a Lear Jet. Let’s talk about something more precise: perfect markets, with ownership, in which individuals compete with others to produce stuff,…

  • Why Economists Ignore So Much of Rich People’s Income

    I have a new post up at Evonomics, hoping my gentle readers will find it of interest…   Related posts: Why Prosperity Requires a Welfare State Now (Also) Blogging at Angry Bear Bleg: Fama/French on Market Size and Efficiency Question for Market Monetarists and MMTers: What Happens if IOR Goes to Zero? Bleg: Accounting for…

  • Yes: Concentrated Wealth and Inequality Crushes Economic Growth

    Like it or not, if countries want to join the “rich country-club,” they need to redistribute wealth. What has not been studied much — at least partially because the data is hard to come by — is the distribution of wealth within countries, and how that relates to economic growth. My devoted readers will undoubtedly remember…

  • Wait: Maybe Europeans are as Rich as Americans

    I’ve pointed out multiple times that despite Europe’s big, supposedly growth-strangling governments, Europe and the U.S. have grown at the same rate over the last 45 years. Here’s the latest data from the OECD, through 2014 (click for larger): And here’s the spreadsheet. Have your way with it. More discussion and explanation in a previous…

  • Why Prosperity Requires a Welfare State

    I’ve got a new post up at a new site, Evonomics Magazine (“The next evolution of economics”). It’s an impressive offshoot with some great articles, assembled by folks involved with The Evolution Institute, which I’m a big booster for. My readers here will find much familiar in the post, but I’m happy with how it…

  • Which Countries Work Hardest? You Might (Not) Be Surprised

    Imagine you had to choose, and could choose: you can spend your whole life and raise your family in either of two equally prosperous countries. In one country people work lots of hours to attain that prosperity. In the other country people work far less. You don’t know anything else about these countries. Which would you choose? The answer…

  • Scalia’s Craven Self-Contradiction and Pettifogging Pedantry

    In his dissent to Edwards v. Aguillard, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia made a neat distinction, sidestepping the issue of “legislative intent” that he finds so troubling: it is possible to discern the objective “purpose” of a statute (i. e., the public good at which its provisions appear to be directed), (The dissent is obsessed with…

  • No: Rich People Don’t Work More

    The meme is ubiquitous, and widely documented: Rich people work longer hours. Obvious implication: they deserve what they get, right? Ditto the poor. Bunk. Why? All the research supporting that meme looks at workers, not families. It completely ignores students, the retired, and anyone else who isn’t working. Alert the media: workers work and earn more than non-workers. And, news flash: rich families…

  • American Exceptionalism Re-Revisited: OECD Taxes/GDP Since 1965

    The OECD has posted this measure for most countries for 2013, so I thought I’d update this chart. It pretty much speaks for itself. Cross-posted at Angry Bear. Related posts: More American Exceptionalism: Drowning the Baby in the Bathwater Just What Exactly Do You Mean by “Money,” Buster? #23 There is Only One Trustworthy News…

  • Darwin Wept: Pyramid Schemes, Collusion, and Price-Fixing, the Modern American Way

    The story hardly bears repeating: Pricing is the ultimate miracle of Darwinian markets. Competitors who produce goods at lower prices thrive, expand their operations, and produce more. Those who charge higher prices (for equivalent goods) are driven to extinction when sensible purchasers abandon them for their more-efficient competitors. This inexorable mechanism drives innovation, investment, and productivity,…

  • National Debt: Since When is the Fed “The Public”?

    This issue has been driving me crazy for a while, and I never see it written about. When responsible people talk about the national debt, they point to Debt Held by the Public: what the federal government owes to non-government entities — households, firms, and foreign entities. (Irresponsible people talk about Gross Public Debt —…

  • Why Liberals Keep Losing

    James Carville was certainly right: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And under Democrats (compared to Republicans), the economy kicks ass: This is GDP growth, but that kick-assness is blatant in any economic measure you look at, from job growth to stock-market returns to household income to government deficits. And it’s true over any lengthy period (say, 30+ years)…

  • How Much Was Your Ballot Worth in 2014?

    Amateur Socialist at Angry Bear asked me about how much was being spent per vote in 2014, and did the due diligence of finding me a spreadsheet showing how many ballots were cast per state. Ask and ye shall receive. Based on that data, here’s a rough-and-ready calc of how much was spent on each…

  • More Bad News for Dems: Total Total Total 2014 Spending Favored Them (Slightly)

    If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending, but you tend to get articles like this that (for fairly good reasons) don’t give you totals, rather breaking it down into campaign/party-committee spending vs SuperPAcs vs 501-whatever “social welfare organizations.” What’s…

  • Are Poor People Consuming More than They Used To? Six Graphs

    “Poor people today have air conditioners and smart phones!” You hear that a lot. “You should be looking at poor people’s consumption, not their income. By that measure, they’re doing great.” The basic point is very true. If poor people today have more and better stuff, can buy more and better stuff each year, maybe we…

  • Explaining “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year”

    See update at bottom. Pavlina Tcherneva’s chart has been getting a lot of play out there: Vox/Matthew Yglesias labeled it “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year.” Scott Winship at Fortune came back at it on methodological grounds, with the headline “No, the Rich Are Not Taking All of the Economic Pie (In…

  • The Pernicious Myth of “Patient Savers and Lenders”

    Banks are obviously different from households. But I think explaining two key differences goes far towards explaining why “endogenous money” theory — often pooh poohed as either confused or obvious — is important to economic thinking. The first is a dweeby accounting difference. The other, which arises from that, is very, very real. 1. When the…