Economics

I've been seeing this chart meme in a few places lately:The URL at the bottom indicates it's from the folks at "I love it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President." I'm assuming the numbers are accurate. There's no date on it, but with that Dow number it has to be fairly recent.Economic recessions are, by definition, deviations from the norm. The … [Read more...] about 5 Years of the Business Cycle

One of the giant minds of economics, Gary Becker, passed away on Saturday. Among other things, he and Kevin Murphy were pioneers in the idea of rational addiction, which I wrote about last year. That was just one example of his approach to applying the tools of economic thinking to a wide variety of other fields such as discrimination, family life, politics, and crime.It's … [Read more...] about Gary Becker on Crime

Over at In These Times, United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard has an opinion piece in which he purports to explain "Why the GOP Really Fears Minimum-Wage Hikes." Republicans in America suffer a crippling anxiety. It’s the terrible fear of corporations paying poor workers too much. I don't have any special claim to understanding why Republicans do the things they do, but … [Read more...] about An Argument From Envy

I spotted this awful meme image on Facebook, from the Being Liberal page:Aside from the poor grammar and gratuitous attention-getting reference to 9/11, its implications about the history of our national debt are just plain wrong. On 9/11 we were attacked. Immediately after military expenditures doubled. Do you recall the Bush administration seeking added taxes or … [Read more...] about Plenty of Blame to Go Around for the National Debt

Poor people get a bad rap.I'm not talking about accusations of welfare fraud, and I don't just mean politicians who call them "moochers" and "takers." I'm talking about the people who think that if they were born poor, they could do better. They believe most poor people could move into the middle class if they just had a better work ethic and made smarter decisions. You … [Read more...] about Poor Ain’t Stupid