Asymptosis: Always Approaching

Asymptosis: always approaching

  • The Poor Get Poorer

    Some more eye-popping if localized numbers, these from Seattle’s insanely great local real-estate blog, Seattle Bubble. Single-family home sales, median prices in King County, Washington:   Decline from Peak YOY Decline Price Quintile: to Oct. 2011 Bottom 50% 20% Low 42% 18% Median 34% 13% High 28% 11% Top 28% 5% To quote The Tim, the…

  • Well Being Comes from Equality, Not GDP

    “If Americans want to live the American Dream, they should go to Denmark.” Here’s the book. Related posts: More on American Inequality and (Lack of) Opportunity Republicans Create Opportunity? Yeah, Right. Guns and Gun Deaths, State by State The Strategic Value of Torture True Conservative Values, and Torture

  • Is it Stupid to Get an English Degree Instead of a Business Degree?

    There’s lots of chatter out there these days about how college students are getting degrees in Lithuanian Folk Dancing instead of Mechanical Engineering, and how they should stop whining about their poor job prospects. Point well taken, but I was interested to come across this interactive table, courtesy of a link from Ryan Avent. Here,…

  • Yes: Machines Are Replacing Humans

    Q: Does technology complement or replace human labor? A: Yes. I’ve looked at this in some depth — with much thinking help from Robin Hanson — here, here and here. After thinking and reading about it for another year or so, I’m prepared to make the bald statement: Yes, an ever-increasing number of workers in America…

  • Did Fannie, Freddie, and the Community Reinvestment Act Cause the Meltdown? Uh uh.

    This meme has been shredded every which way from Sunday, but given that Michael Bloomberg promulgated it yet again just this week, I felt the need to share the facts for those who might not have seen them. Let’s start with a picture: Those two bars on the left are loans that American Enterprise Institute…

  • Does Self-Employment Cause Government Deficits?

    I’m not really suggesting it does. It’s just that I found this graphic to be pretty eye-catching: From this CEPR PDF, “An International Comparison of Small Business Employment”. Notice the top (five out of) six. Also that the “America as the land of the independent entrepreneur” meme seems profoundly misplaced. I don’t have much more…

  • Nick Rowe: “If it wasn’t an equilibrium, it would be somewhere else.”

    I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve learned from reading Nick Rowe’s stuff. But still, I constantly feel that his underlying assumptions are wrong. Here’s a great example: The US economy is currently in equilibrium. It’s not a market-clearing equilibrium. It’s not a very good equilibrium. But it is an equilibrium. If it wasn’t an…

  • Why Doesn’t Warren Buffett Give All His Money to the Government?

    Psychohistorian’s comment over at Modeled Behavior gives the best answer I’ve seen to this question (a specious rhetorical question that — since it ignores the obvious issue of collective action — Tyler Cowen acknowledges to be worthy of a fifteen-year-old). If I say, “We should all bring a dish so we can have a potluck,”…

  • Are Lawyers Getting Cheaper?

    Random facts: I got curious, given the glut of lawyers out there (the BLS data people are citing says 44K graduates and 30K job openings a year in the U.S.), whether fees are being driven down. The only data I can find is from Canada, and it suggests that they are — pretty profoundly: (The…

  • Krugman: “while we were arguing about NAFTA, Sauron was gathering his forces in Mordor”

    via EPIphenomena – NYTimes.com. Related posts: Must. Make. Gubmint. Smaller. Proofiness! It’s About Bloody Time. Sheesh. Did I Mention Mentioning that It’s the Health Care Costs, Stupid? We Should Make Janitors Work Longer Because Lawyers Are Living Longer

  • Yeah, Right: Government Regulation Is the Problem

    Bruce Bartlett points us to this: Where do these numbers come from? The Bureau of Labor Statistics asks businesses why they laid people off, and the businesses tell them. Welcome to the reality-based community. Related posts: Reagan Staffer Bartlett Quotes Conservative Icon Wills, Eviscerating Republicans Choosing a VP For All the Right Reason Drowning the Baby…

  • #OWS — How Wall Street Capital Destroys Capitalism

    Yves Smith points to this passage from Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men, about the business model behind private-equity funds: Charlie Hallac, a top deputy to Larry Fink at BlackRock and head of the firm’s analytical arm, BlackRock Solutions, distilled it down with precision: “Of every twenty deals, the large aggressive PE firm expects seventeen of the…

  • #OWS: Saving Capitalism from the “Capitalists”?

    I had one of those big Aha moments earlier this year — as is so often the case, while reading one of Steve Randy Waldman’s posts. Karl Marx was a “sharp analyst”, but a “terrible futurist”, he says (emphasis mine for easy skimming; read his whole post, in fact everything he’s written). … the story…

  • The Reserve Requirement Is Just “a Service Charge for Legalized Counterfeiting”

    Nice line from The New Arthurian. (Update: He reminds me that I should have included his comment, which I agree with: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”) If the reserve requirement is 10%, it shaves about ten percent off the interest banks receive on their money-printing loans. If their loan rates are running at 5%,…

  • Arnold Kling: Non-Acute Health Care Is a “Status Good”

    He really said that. I guess people take their kids to annual checkups because they want to signal their high status to others. This is totally in keeping with Jonathan Haidt’s findings: on measures that “have anything to do with compassion,” libertarians are at the very bottom of the political spectrum. Likewise Tyler Cowen’s paean…

  • More on “Savings” and Investment: I’m Not Alone

    Three updates on this topic: 1. I’m pleased to receive at-least partial support for the notion bruited in my previous post on this topic (“Savings Equals Investment Equals…Zero?”) in comments from Nick Rowe, whose knowledge of economic theory and Economics history exceeds mine as Jupiter exceeds Mercury: Why *should* we define “saving” as “Y-T-C”? We (economists)…

  • A Lean, Mean Fighting Machine: Radical Plan for Cutting the Defense Budget and Reconfiguring the U.S. Military

    This is not some limp-wristed notion from a coastal-elite dressing-gown blogger. (That would be me, caricatured uncharitably but not completely inaccurately.) It’s from the man who one Army National Training Center official described,* in 1997, as “the best war fighter the army has got.” Douglas Macgregor thinks we can cut the defense budget by $280 billion over ten…

  • Getting In and Out of Unemployment: 1967 to 2011

    I find the following graph singularly depressing. It shows the chances of becoming unemployed (red), and the chances of exiting unemployment (blue), since 1967. The odds of becoming unemployed today are basically identical to 1967. The probability of exiting unemployment — the “escape rate” — has plummeted over that period. (Though it was roughly flat…

  • I Guess the Right Wing Hasn’t Been Paying Attention for the Last Thirty Years

    Tyler Cowen: Anyone — Keynesian or otherwise — paying attention to the last thirty years of empirical macro never expected much crowding out of financial capital in the first place. Google hit #3 out of 952,000, from June 1, 2011: Two words explain all you need to know about our national economic debate. I think…

  • Occupy Wall Street Trouncing Tea Party, 54% to 27%

    View Very or Somewhat Favorably: Tea Party (Q8): 27% Occupy Wall Street (Q11): 54% Not that I think this “proves” anything. Hell 60% of Americans (say they) believe in angels. Just sayin’: Go Team! Topline Results of Oct. 9-10, 2011, TIME Poll | Swampland | TIME.com. Related posts: Tea Partiers: Old, White, Rich, Educated Men…

  • Scott Sumner: “The 2009 stimulus was sabotaged.” By the Fed.

    Not everyone (notably including me) has time to read everything Scott Sumner writes. But you really should — even if you don’t believe or agree with it all (like, his conventional notions about not taxing earnings and gains on financial assets). This — on the interacting dynamics of fiscal and monetary policy — is a don’t-miss:…