economics Archives - Page 27 of 50 - Stable Genius Liberal

The invisible welfare state of the top one percent

“Indirect social policies offer benefits that are comparable to direct social benefits both in their purposes and in their costs,” Mettler and Koch write. “Both are targeted to specific groups of people, aimed to reward some kind of activity or some class of persons whom policymakers deem worthy of public support. From an accounting perspective, as well, both types have the same effect: They impose costs on the federal budget, whether incurred through fiscal obligations or lost revenues.”

Notice the complete lack of discussion of austerity for the parts of the welfare state that support the wealthiest?

Why Nations Fail: Uzbekistan Extractive institutions in action

Like almost all nations that are poor, Uzbekistan fails because its people operate under extractive economic institutions, which provide few incentives for investment or technological ingenuity, and force people to engage in activities that they do not wish or are not well-suited to (such as farmers being forced to grow crops that they don’t want and children being forced to pick cotton rather than learn in school). And the important point is this: these extractive economic institutions are not there by mistake. They have been designed this way for the benefit of the elite. There was no coerced child labor in Uzbekistan when cotton was produced by state-owned firms.

Amazing article from a new favorite blog.

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A good rule of thumb is that if politicians are talking about the price of gas, they’re talking nonsense. This week is no exception. Higher gas prices: The Republican plan to blame high gas prices on President Obama. – Slate Magazine

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After we sat down, we asked the waitress for a coffee. She thanked us for our order and immediately turned and walked out the front door. My friend explained that the owner of the bookstore/café couldn’t get a license to provide coffee. She had tried to just buy a coffee machine and give the coffee… Continue reading Untitled

O’Reilly and Dobbs to Obama: Be More Socialist!

O’Reilly and Dobbs were saying that Obama should be taking more coercive action than he’s taking. Against whom? Oil companies. Both O’Reilly and Dobbs emphasized that U.S. oil companies don’t own the oil they think they own. Who owns it? We do, according to O’Reilly and Dobbs. And not we, as in you and me, but we, as in the U.S. government. Dobbs advocated “jaw-boning” oil companies into charging lower prices. He also advocated some kind of government slush trust fund that the oil companies would fund with a special tax. Both O’Reilly and Dobbs got upset about oil companies exporting gasoline. So, based on this and other O’Reilly/Dobbs pronouncements, exports of oil products are bad, exports of other products are good, and imports of almost everything are bad. They must have a very interesting economic model.

Henderson is being just a little unfair to O’Reilly. But other than that, this is just too good not to share.

Austerity, China, the housing market, and the Middle East: Four reasons to stay gloomy about the economy. – Slate Magazine

A must read article by Nouriel Roubini.

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Opposition to the bailout was driven, in part, by the recognition that nationalization of an industrial enterprise is an open invitation to mismanagement and bad public policy. You could easily imagine a scenario in which the Obama administration made its partisan political objectives a key management priority at Government Motors. Alternatively, you could easily imagine… Continue reading Untitled

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The world’s largest commodity trader, Goldman Sachs told its clients that it believed speculators like itself had artificially driven the price of oil at least $20 higher than supply and demand dictate. They even admitted that their work to drive up prices has harmed the American economic recovery Goldman Sachs Admits Record Speculation To Blame… Continue reading Untitled

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Most of Western Europe today is both more equal in incomes and more economically mobile than the United States. And it isn’t just Western Europe. Countries as varied as Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Pakistan all have higher degrees of income mobility than we do. A nation that prides itself on its lack of class… Continue reading Untitled

Racial Education Gap Narrowing, Income Education Gap Growing

pure income inequality has become much bigger and on a variety of different fronts income-linked stratification has become a bigger deal. One way in which this reflects itself is that the “achievement gap” in school between white kids and black kids used to be bigger than the gap between rich and poor.

I remember someone on Bill Maher’s old show making a joke about this. Conservatives looked at the problem of poor black kids having fewer opportunities to get an education than poor white kids and decided to solve the problem by making sure that poor white kids don’t have any opportunities for a good education either.