The high cost of low prices

Whereas Great Depression America valued well-made utilitarian products and understood the inherent danger of bargain culture, Great Recession America prioritizes discounts at the expense of everything else. From The high cost of low prices Great point.

A Mechanical Manifesto

it’s conservative economists who insist that people are always rational and utility-maximizing; liberal economists are the ones willing to invoke bounded rationality, animal spirits, etc.. The whole salt-water fresh-water split was about which you were going to believe: the assumption of perfect maximization, or your own lying eyes. And the Keynesians were the ones who… Continue reading A Mechanical Manifesto

The Politics of Erskine-Bowles

I think that this is a blueprint that conservatives should regard favorably, all things considered. But let’s be clear: The cuts it proposes don’t even remotely “slash the size of government”; they merely slow its future growth. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, federal revenue has hovered around 18.3 percent of G.D.P. since 1980, breaking 20 percent… Continue reading The Politics of Erskine-Bowles

The Hijacked Commission

The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh. So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at… Continue reading The Hijacked Commission

Goat standard, not gold standard

in remote Korawan, … have come up with a novel bank which exclusively deals with goats – accepting the animal as savings and lending it out as loans.        “Prema and her friends hailing from Afrozi village have establish a bank which deals exclusively in goats,” development block coordinator Subedar Singh told PTI.  …       … Continue reading Goat standard, not gold standard

Can liberalism save capitalism from conservatism?

Conservatives have long succeeded in persuading business that they are its friends and liberals are its enemies. In reality, the reverse is true. Liberalism saved American capitalism during the depression, and if American capitalism is to be saved from the Great Recession, liberals will have to rescue it. Modern conservatives claim to be pro-business. But… Continue reading Can liberalism save capitalism from conservatism?