Economics

Elon Musk may have been kicking employees out of Twitter to reduce operating costs, but it's possible he couldn't have destroyed more of Twitter's value if he'd burned down headquarters.Let me explain...It’s common to use the word “capital” to mean money, as in capitalizing a corporation, but to an economist, capital refers basically to tools. That is, capital goods are … [Read more...] about Burning Down Twitter

I'm seeing a lot of online chatter about inflation lately, and naturally the commentary has the stink of politics on it. Republicans are trying to pin the price increases on Biden and the Democrats. The Democrats, in turn, are trying to minimize the problem by denying that the inflation is as bad as it seems -- currently 6.8% ((CPI-U, all items, per the December 10 BLS … [Read more...] about Inflation or Productivity Loss?

I admit I haven't been closely following the progress of Biden's pandemic stimulus bill in Congress, because the back-and-forth arguments exceeded my tolerance for tedium. Nevertheless, I don't think a stimulus is what we need.Let me start by saying that what we need most from a pandemic relief bill is things that make the pandemic stop. More vaccine, more PPE, more … [Read more...] about We Don’t Need a Stimulus

I've fallen behind on my blog reading, so I missed Greg Laden's post a few days ago in which he tries to argue that carbon taxes aren't really taxes. Actually, he seems to prefer to call them a "carbon dividend," which is apparently the trendy new name for this idea. I googled and found this page at the Citizens Climate Lobby which explains it. It's basically a carbon tax -- … [Read more...] about Carbon Dividend/Carbon Tax