Sense on Stilts: Eight Graphs Showing a Quarter-Century of Wealth Inequality...
Scott Sumner made a very important point a while back (and repeatedly since) in a post wherein he makes a bunch of other (IMO) not very good points: Income and wealth inequality data: Nonsense on...
View ArticleThink Debt-Funded Stock-Buybacks are Pernicious? Here’s Why You’re Right
I’ve ranted about this phenomenon for a long time: Do Businesses Borrow to Invest in Productive Assets? Quoting JW Mason: “the marginal dollar borrowed by a nonfinancial business in this period was...
View ArticleThe One Reason Apple Hasn’t Solved TV’s Cables and Remotes Problem
How many remote controls do you have for your TV? Do you care to describe the tangle of cables and wires connecting your various components? If you’re like almost everyone I know, the answers are “at...
View ArticleContra Jared Bernstein: Stagnation, Spending, and The Velocity of Wealth —...
I’ve said many times: every economic assertion should be preceded by the words “by this measure.” For big economic questions, you need to look at lots of different measures, lots of different way, to...
View ArticleLefty – Libertarian Cage Fight! Get Out the Popcorn…
Matt Bruenig and Demos have thrown down the gauntlet against libertarian ideology. Trevor Burrus at Cato has picked it up. Should be worth tuning in. Matt pulls no punches. He’s emerged in the last...
View ArticleLiberal Economists: Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight
Jared Bernstein has offered a muscular and cogent response to my recent take-down of his CAP paper on inequality and growth. (I called it “week-kneed.”) I’d like to respond to his many excellent points...
View ArticleThe Pernicious Myth of “Patient Savers and Lenders”
Banks are obviously different from households. But I think explaining two key differences goes far towards explaining why “endogenous money” theory — often pooh poohed as either confused or obvious —...
View ArticleAgain: Saving Does Not Increase Savings
I’m reprising a previous (and longer) post here in hopefully simplified and clarified form, for a discussion I’m in the midst of. “Saving” and “Savings” seem like simple concepts, but they’re not. They...
View ArticleExplaining “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see...
See update at bottom. Pavlina Tcherneva’s chart has been getting a lot of play out there: Vox/Matthew Yglesias labeled it “The most important chart about the American economy you’ll see this year.”...
View ArticleAmazon and Hachette: What’s Really at Issue?
I just sent the following to David Streitfeld, the main reporter covering this dispute for the New York Times. If any of my gentle readers has an answer, I’d love to hear it: Dear Mr. Streitfeld: What...
View ArticleAre Poor People Consuming More than They Used To? Six Graphs
“Poor people today have air conditioners and smart phones!” You hear that a lot. “You should be looking at poor people’s consumption, not their income. By that measure, they’re doing great.” The basic...
View ArticleBill Gates Agrees with Me on Piketty
He really likes the book, but expresses frustration that Piketty (emphasis mine): …doesn’t adequately differentiate among different kinds of capital… Imagine three types of wealthy people. One guy is...
View ArticleHow Do Households Build Wealth? Probably Not the Way You Think. Three Graphs
Work hard. Save your money. Spend less than you earn. That’s how you become wealthy, right? That’s not totally wrong, but if you think that’s the whole story — or even a large part of the story — you...
View ArticleMore Bad News for Dems: Total Total Total 2014 Spending Favored Them (Slightly)
If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending,...
View ArticleHow Much Was Your Ballot Worth in 2014?
Amateur Socialist at Angry Bear asked me about how much was being spent per vote in 2014, and did the due diligence of finding me a spreadsheet showing how many ballots were cast per state. Ask and ye...
View ArticleWhy You Probably Don’t Understand the National Accounts. In Pictures.
If anyone means to deliberate successfully about anything, there is one thing he must do at the outset: he must know what it is he is deliberating about. Otherwise he is bound to go utterly astray....
View ArticleIs GDP Wildly Underestimating GDP?
The markets have been showing a rather particular schizophrenia over the last dozen or so years — but not, perhaps, the one you may be thinking of. This schizo-disconnect is between the goods markets...
View ArticleWhy Liberals Keep Losing
James Carville was certainly right: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And under Democrats (compared to Republicans), the economy kicks ass: This is GDP growth, but that kick-assness is blatant in any...
View ArticleNational Debt: Since When is the Fed “The Public”?
This issue has been driving me crazy for a while, and I never see it written about. When responsible people talk about the national debt, they point to Debt Held by the Public: what the federal...
View ArticleDarwin Wept: Pyramid Schemes, Collusion, and Price-Fixing, the Modern...
The story hardly bears repeating: Pricing is the ultimate miracle of Darwinian markets. Competitors who produce goods at lower prices thrive, expand their operations, and produce more. Those who charge...
View ArticleAmerican Exceptionalism Re-Revisited: OECD Taxes/GDP Since 1965
The OECD has posted this measure for most countries for 2013, so I thought I’d update this chart. It pretty much speaks for itself. Cross-posted at Asymptosis. The post American Exceptionalism...
View ArticleNo: Rich People Don’t Work More
The meme is ubiquitous, and widely documented: Rich people work longer hours. Obvious implication: they deserve what they get, right? Ditto the poor. Bunk. Why? All the research supporting that meme...
View ArticleScalia’s Craven Self-Contradiction and Pettifogging Pedantry
In his dissent to Edwards v. Aguillard, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia made a neat distinction, sidestepping the issue of “legislative intent” that he finds so troubling: it is possible to...
View ArticleWhich Countries Work Hardest? You Might (Not) Be Surprised
Imagine you had to choose, and could choose: you can spend your whole life and raise your family in either of two equally prosperous countries. In one country people work lots of hours to attain that...
View ArticlePredicting Recessions The Easy Way: Monetarists, MMT, And The Money Stock
I have a new post up that has implications for stock-market investment, so I decided to try posting it over at Seeking Alpha, where they’re paying me a few tens of dollars for the post (plus more based...
View ArticleReal Household Net Worth: Look Out Below?
In my last post I pointed out that over the last half century, every time the year-over-year change in Real Household Net Worth went negative (real household wealth decreased), a recession had either...
View ArticleWhere MMT Gets Its Accounting Wrong — And Right
Modern Monetary Theory has been revolutionary in economics, and its influence is — beneficially — ever-more pervasive. It has opened the eyes of a generation to a clear-eyed, accounting-based...
View ArticleWhy Prosperity Requires a Welfare State
I’ve got a new post up at a new site, Evonomics Magazine (“The next evolution of economics”). It’s an impressive offshoot with some great articles, assembled by folks involved with The Evolution...
View ArticleWait: Maybe Europeans are as Rich as Americans
I’ve pointed out multiple times that despite Europe’s big, supposedly growth-strangling governments, Europe and the U.S. have grown at the same rate over the last 45 years. Here’s the latest data from...
View ArticleWhy Tyler Cowen Doesn’t Understand the Economy: It’s the Debt, Stupid
In a recent post Tyler Cowen makes an admirable effort to lay out his overarching approach to thinking about macroeconomics, revealing the assumptions underlying his understanding of how economies...
View ArticleNoahpinion: What Causes Recessions? Debt Runups or Wealth Declines?
Noah Smith asks what seems to be an interesting question in a recent post: “what leads to big recessions: wealth or debt”? But I’d like to suggest that it’s actually a confused question. Like: is it...
View ArticleWhen Did Hillary Lose the Election? In 1964.
The half-century story of Democrats’ abdication and decline By Steve Roth. Publisher, Evonomics On January 1, 1964, John F. Kennedy posthumously initiated the half-century decline of the Democratic...
View ArticleLiberals Getting it Wrong on the Job Guarantee
I’ve been quite troubled lately by voices I’ve been hearing from my compatriots on the Left discussing the Job Guarantee — especially in relation to an alternative, Universal Basic Income. A new...
View ArticleThe Evolution of Ownership….get off my lawn.
By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) You Don’t Own That! The Evolution of Ownership Get off my lawn. (repost) In a recent post on the “evolution of money,” which concentrated heavily on...
View ArticleDo We Wildly Underestimate GDP?
Been looking around for a few, new, and good writers to add to Angry Bear. I know we have Robert, New Deal democrat, and Joel amongst us now. I ran into Steve Roth since he posted to Tom Walker’s post....
View ArticleGovernment is Not the Problem. Bad Government is the Problem
Having gone from trump to Biden. a person who I thought would never make a good president makes Steve’s argument on Bad Government being the problem when trump was the president. Asymptosis »...
View ArticleActually, Only Banks Print Money
Asymptosis » Actually, Only Banks Print Money, Steve Roth I’m thinking this headline will raise some eyebrows in the MMT community. But it’s not really so radical. It’s just using the word money very...
View ArticlePersonal Saving Makes More than 40% of Property Income . . . Invisible. Think...
Personal income, so Personal saving, ignore a huge part of Total Return — the income-from-assets measure used by every modern portfolio investor. Guess what’s missing? Personal Saving Makes More than...
View ArticleEconomic Origin Stories and the State of the World
Asymptosis » Economic Origin Stories and the State of the World, Steve Roth. Origin stories and creation myths pack a pretty hefty weight of import in human understandings of the world. Examples are...
View ArticleTotal Income, and the Collapse of the Household Labor Share
The decline in workers’ share of the total pie is far more extreme than standard measures suggest. Total Income, and the Collapse of the Household Labor Share, Wealth Economics, Steve Roth The best way...
View ArticleHow Redistribution Makes Us All Richer
Modeling the numbers on bottom-up and middle-out economics. How Redistribution Makes Us All Richer, Wealth Economics, Steve Roth You hear a lot about bottom-up and middle-out economics these days, as...
View ArticleMMT and the Wealth of Nations, Revisited
Steve Roth (at Asymptosis) I just had occasion, in replying to a correspondent, to reiterate much of the thinking in my recent MMT Conference presentation. I thought it might be a useful and...
View Article(Not) Thinking About Money
It’s tempting to abolish the word entirely Originally published at Wealth Economics J.W. Mason offers a bang-up post on economists’ thinking about “money,” how economists have thought and talked about...
View ArticleThe Bottom 80% of U.S. Households Persistently Dissaves, Spending more than...
Only the top 20% saves. Originally published at Wealth Economics Newly released data series from the Bureau Economic Analysis have revealed a pretty eye-popping economic reality that’s been invisible...
View ArticleJohn Maynard Keynes Doesn’t Seem to Know What He Means by the Word “Spending”
Is investment spending “spending,” or isn’t it? Steve Roth (@ Wealth Economics) J.M. Keynes’ brief Preface to the French edition of General Theory is sometimes held up as the most concise, cogent, and...
View ArticleIs More Work Better? Think Again?
Is More Work Better? Think Again? The freedom of free time, branded as unproductive “leisure,” gets no respect. Originally published at Wealth Economics This post is prompted by a recent tweet from the...
View ArticleEarned Labor Income Is a Small and Weak Lever. Unearned Property Income, and...
Reversing extreme wealth concentration means going after property income. Originally Published at Wealth Economics Economists and pundits have been cheered of late by the labor-share increase during...
View ArticleBiden Says Billionaires Pay an 8.2% Tax Rate. What Do Other Households Pay?
Let’s compare apples to apples here. Originally Published at Wealth Economics Uncle Joe has thrown out this 8.2% figure a couple of times, including in last night’s SOTU. Multiple folks have unpacked...
View ArticleWhat is Wealth?
The wealth of people and the wealth of nations Originally Published at Wealth Economics If you read this blog much, you’ll find many careful definitions of terms — something that the economics...
View ArticleWhere Does Wealth Come From?
Wrong answers only: “saving” Originally Published at Wealth Economics In my last post, I tried to say precisely what the words “wealth” and “assets” mean as they’re used in this blog. This post tackles...
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