Mr. Biggs, former chief global strategist for U.S. investment banking powerhouse Morgan Stanley, demanded the U.S. government temporarily return to ideas used in the Great Depression as a way to get the country back to higher growth. “What the U.S. really needs is a massive infrastructure program … similar to the WPA back in the… Continue reading Hedge Fund Hippies
Category: economics
Get Back To Reality!
Both parties, in fact, are moving to anti-Keynesian policy orientations, which deny additional stimulus and make rather awkward and unsubstantiated claims that if you balance the budget, “they will come.” It is envisioned that corporations or investors will somehow overnight be attracted to the revived competitiveness of the U.S. labor market: Politicians feel that fiscal… Continue reading Get Back To Reality!
A Hamiltonian Solution For Europe
It would start with the recognition that Greece is insolvent. It can’t pay the money it owes. One or two or maybe three other countries also may be insolvent. And the existence of solvency problems in some states is creating liquidity problems for other larger states. So there’s some insolvency, and even though the insolvency… Continue reading A Hamiltonian Solution For Europe
Future of jobs in a world filled with automation and robots
Future of jobs in a world filled with automation and robots
Roboticist Hans Moravec predicts that by 2020, robots will simulate the intelligence of a monkey. That may not seem smart, but with adequate software, it will be intelligent enough to perform most of today’s jobs. And here’s the “killer-ap” – future ‘bots can build labor-free copies of themselves increasing their numbers exponentially. By mid-2020s, some predict, humanoids could outnumber people.
One day one person will control all the robots and no human will have a job. What will we do then?
If robots can create robots, the supply should be large enough that the cost for a robot is rather minimal. Near infinite labor means the costs to mine garbage dumps for materials becomes doable. So is clearing brown fields of hazardous material. Even building a canal across Arizona.
So what can you call a world that has access to near infinite labor other than Utopia?
Thoughts on Voodoo
In short, there’s a very good case to be made that austerity now isn’t just a bad idea because of its impact on the economy and the unemployed; it may well fail even at the task of helping the budget balance. It’s important to realize that I’m not saying that government spending always pays for… Continue reading Thoughts on Voodoo
Bush tax cuts 10th anniversary: They’ve been a failure in every conceivable way.
The massive Bush tax cuts mark their 10th birthday this week. Sadly, despite my best efforts to find something redeeming about them—honest!—there is little to celebrate. By nearly all of the metrics set out by President Bush himself, the cuts were a colossal failure. From Bush tax cuts 10th anniversary: They’ve been a failure in… Continue reading Bush tax cuts 10th anniversary: They’ve been a failure in every conceivable way.
Higher Inflation Would Slow U.S.-China Currency Adjustment | ThinkProgress
Kindred Winecoff introduces the excellent point that the fact that the U.S. is experiencing an inflation rate that’s lower than China’s means that the real exchange rate is adjusting faster than the nominal rate. Consequently, “[t]o the extent that we want to boost employment through exporting, increased inflation could prolong that process.” Or to look… Continue reading Higher Inflation Would Slow U.S.-China Currency Adjustment | ThinkProgress
The Rentier Regime
What explains this opposition to any and all attempts to mitigate the economic disaster? I can think of a number of causes, but Kuttner makes a very good point: everything we’re seeing makes sense if you think of the right as representing the interests of rentiers, of creditors who have claims from the past —… Continue reading The Rentier Regime
Lysenkoism as economic policy in the Diamond nomination
I think the rejection of a Nobel laureate for a seat at the Fed is tied, in a fundamental way, to the willingness of economists with decent professional reputations to sign on to the increasingly crazy proclamations issued by Republican politicians. Whether they are honest with themselves or not, what they’ve realized is that they… Continue reading Lysenkoism as economic policy in the Diamond nomination
The Ongoing Conservative Recovery
Over the past year, we’ve consistently seen the economy engage in so-so private sector job growth offset by job losses in the public sector. The results are, if you ask me, bad. But in a decent world, conservatives would be forced to acknowledge that these are the results they claim to want. The private sector’s… Continue reading The Ongoing Conservative Recovery