January 19, 2017 at 07:09 AM in Streams: (Friday) for the Weekend..., Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (11)
Must-Reads:
Most-Recent Should-Reads:
Most-Recent Links:
January 22, 2017 at 07:13 PM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (7)
Richard Feynman: Math and Science: "I’m going to describe to you how Nature is—and if you don’t like it, that’s going to get in the way of your understanding it...
...It’s a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They’ve learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don’t like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is—absurd.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Richard Feynman: Math and Science" »
January 21, 2017 at 08:50 AM in Science: Cognitive, Streams: (Weekend) Reading, Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (2)
Should-Read: We are narrative-loving animals. It's how we think. We are jumped-up East African Plains Apes, only 3000 generations removed from those who first developed language, trying to understand the world as monkeys with, as Winnie-the-Pooh would say, “very little brain”. We are lousy at remembering lists—that is why we need to write them down. We are not much good at retaining sets of information—unless we can, somehow, turn them into a journey or a memory palace. We are excellent, however, at remembering landscapes. And we are fabulous at stories: human characters with believable motivations; beginnings, middles, and endings; hubris and nemesis; cause and effect; villains and heroes. To place ideas and lessons in the context of a story is a mighty aid to our thinking:
Charles Stross: Why Scifi Matters More When the Future Looks So Dangerous: "Near-future scifi is not a predictive medium: it doesn’t directly reflect reality so much as it presents us with a funhouse mirror view of the world around us...
January 21, 2017 at 05:31 AM in Science Fiction, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (3)
Should-Read: Xavier Jaravel: The Unequal Gains from Product Innovations: Evidence from the US Retail Sector: "From 2004 to 2013 higher-income households systematically experienced a larger increase in product variety and a lower inflation rate for continuing products...
January 20, 2017 at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: Larry Summers: Disillusioned in Davos: "I am disturbed by (i) the spectacle of financiers who three months ago were telling anyone who would listen that they would never do business with a Trump company...
January 20, 2017 at 06:51 PM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (6)
John Scalzi: The New Year and the Bend of the Arc: "As we begin 2017...
...there is something I’ve been thinking about, that I’d like for you to consider for the new year. It starts with a famous quote, the best-known version of which is from Martin Luther King, but which goes back to the transcendentalist Theodore Parker. The quote is:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: John Scalzi: The New Year and the Bend of the Arc" »
January 20, 2017 at 02:47 PM in History, Moral Responsibility, Philosophy: Moral, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: (Weekend) Reading, Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (1)
Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:
January 20, 2017 at 11:05 AM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: N. Gregory Mankiw and Lawrence H. Summers (1984): Are Tax Cuts Really Expansionary?: "If consumer spending generates more money demand than other components of GNP...
January 20, 2017 at 08:25 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Note to Self: I always find it interesting that Friedman and the monetarists formulated money demand as a function of income rather than of private spending, or even of private consumption spending. You don't need or want money when your income is high, unless you want to spend it.
January 20, 2017 at 08:22 AM in Economics: Macro, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (2)
Should-Read: A (mostly) smart piece by Nick Rowe. But it is not wrong to start with Knut Wicksell, as long as you get to Irving Fisher. And C+I+G+(X-M)=Y is a way of starting with Wicksell--that's why John Hicks called it the "IS Curve". Many might find it clearer to start with Fisher (I certainly do), but experience has taught me that that is really a matter of taste.
The rest of this, however, is excellent:
Nick Rowe: AD/AS: A Suggested Interpretation: "Many macroeconomists don't like the Aggregate Demand/Aggregate Supply framework.... So I am going to explain it...
January 20, 2017 at 08:20 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (2)
Must-Read: Looking forward at the Trump administration, it now seems very clear that under the Trump administration policy will be:
Therefore, it seems important that as much as possible should be done to encourage:
Nicholas Bagley has the ObamaCare front on this:
Nicholas Bagley: Patching Obamacare at the State Level: "If Congress zeroes out the individual mandate—and my hunch is that it will—it’s game over for the exchanges...
January 20, 2017 at 02:51 AM in Economics: Health, Moral Responsibility, Obama Administration, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (1)
Better Living through Chemistry: My first caffeinated coffee drink in two weeks--and only my third in a month and a half. WHEE!!!!
January 19, 2017 at 04:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Live from the Land of Deferred Maintenance: Here at Berkeley, Evans Hall needs eight elevators. It has five elevators. But now, due to deferred maintenance and to "renovations", it has only three...
As a result, even though it is the third day of classes, the fifth and sixth floors of Evans where the Economics Department's are very quiet indeed...
January 19, 2017 at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Should-Read: Duncan Black: Conservative Health Care Plan: "Liberal Trump fanfic scenarios aside...
January 19, 2017 at 07:17 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (3)
Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:
January 19, 2017 at 06:58 AM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: Kevin Drum: Why Do Republicans Hate Obamacare?: "Why the continued rabid opposition to Obamacare?...
January 18, 2017 at 02:07 PM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (6)
Live from Massively Dysfunctional California Hall: I can think of nothing worse for alumni relations, development, and fund-raising in the long run than this kind of disruptive nickel-and-diming of students.
January 17, 2017 at 02:44 PM in Berkeley, Moral Responsibility, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (9)
Live from the Cage of the Orange-Haired Baboon: Phil Mattingly: On Twitter: "Asked Senate HELP Chair Lamar Alexander if he'd spoken to Trump or his team about the president-elect's healthcare plan: 'I have not.'"
January 17, 2017 at 02:02 PM in Moral Responsibility, Politics, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (5)
Live from Planet Gutenberg: The day's book haul. These both look very good. Unfortunately, the first day of classes is absolutely the last day you want your book showing up in my mailbox in the form of a review copy...
James Kwak (2016): Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality (New York: Pantheon: 1101871199) http://amzn.to/2k1yt3y
Daniel Wolff: Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 (New York: Harper: 0062451693)http://amzn.to/2ixYJSP
January 17, 2017 at 01:46 PM in Berkeley, Books, Economics: History, History, Music, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Live from the Orange Haired-Baboon Cage: Ken Miller: Understanding Our New President’s Priorities through Twitter: "Trump’s favorite individual topic... communications that disparage the media in some way (particularly the NY Times and CNN), and posts related to his “Thank You” rallies...
January 17, 2017 at 05:14 AM in Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (1)
Should-Read: Equitable Growth: Third Annual Class of Grantees: "Research on how economic inequality affects macroeconomic growth and stability...
January 17, 2017 at 05:00 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (1)
Should-Read: João Amador and Sónia Cabral: Networks of Value-Added Trade: "Global Value Chains have become the paradigm...
January 17, 2017 at 04:54 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: JEC: The Next New Macro: "The seeds of disaster... lay...
January 17, 2017 at 04:50 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (1)
Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:
January 17, 2017 at 04:47 AM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage:
If you voted for Trump, you are dead to me...
January 16, 2017 at 07:06 PM in Moral Responsibility, Politics, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (19)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto http://tinyurl.com/dl20161210h: This piece by Marx and Engels stands at the head of two traditions:
You cannot separate these two. You should not try.
Read with an eye toward what is going to flourish in later intellectual and political history.
Continue reading "Reading: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848): The Communist Manifesto" »
January 16, 2017 at 12:25 PM in Berkeley, Books, Economics: History, History, Moral Responsibility, Philosophy: Moral, Political Economy, Politics | Permalink | Comments (4)
Live from America's Real Majority: Scott Lemieux: Donald Trump is Highly Unpopular: "There’s a lot of defeatism about opposing Trump...
January 16, 2017 at 11:29 AM in Moral Responsibility, Politics, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (2)
Hoisted from the Archives: My Very Short Take on World War II...: From “September 1, 1939,” by W.H. Auden...
...I sit in one of the dives/On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid/As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:/Waves of anger and of fear
Circulate over the bright/And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;/The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.Accurate scholarship can/Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now/That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,/What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:/and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,/Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return...
Continue reading "My Very Short Take on World War II...: Hoisted from the Archives" »
January 16, 2017 at 09:41 AM in Economics: History, History, Long Form, Moral Responsibility, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: (BiWeekly) Honest Broker, Streams: Cycle, Streams: Highlighted, Twentieth Century Economic History | Permalink | Comments (13)
Live from Evans Hall: I'm taking over Barry Eichengreen's "The Current Research Frontier: Great Recent Books in Non-American Economic History" course--Econ 210b--this semester...
I would ask those planning to show up on Tuesday please drop me a line--and also a book they want to read, if they have one.
Joachim Voth from Zurich visiting Haas will be joining us, and the book list still has a few spaces available...
January 16, 2017 at 06:20 AM in Berkeley, Economics: History, History, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (1)
Must-Read: Guido Alfani: Europe’s Rich since 1300: "Throughout this time, the only significant declines in inequality were the result of the Black Death and the World Wars...
January 16, 2017 at 05:44 AM in Economics: History, Economics: Inequality, History, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (9)
A lot of intellectual energy in the early 2000s was a reaction to the installation by a five-to-four vote of a manifestly unqualified president--and the huge wave of justificatory bullshit that the Noise Machine generated around that in the form of clouds of misinformation to hide reality. People with platforms began calling it out, hoping to find other people to talk to to check whether they were being gaslighted or not.
The finest example of this I have ever seen was Belle Waring's Best Weblog Post EVAR from 2004. It's a thing to remember. If aspect of the Reagan presidency were real tragedy, and the entire Bush 43 presidency was tragic farce, what is this about to be?
Belle Waring (2004): If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride--A Pony!: "I think Matthew Yglesias' response to Josh Chafetz' exercise in wishful thinking was about right...
...even if Brad DeLong's is more nuanced.
I'd like to note, though, that Chafetz is selling himself short. You see, wishes are totally free. It's like when you can't decide whether to daydream about being a famous Hollywood star or having amazing magical powers. Why not--be a famous Hollywood star with amazing magical powers! Along these lines, John has developed an infallible way to improve any public policy wishes. You just wish for the thing, plus, wish that everyone would have their own pony!
January 16, 2017 at 05:12 AM in Information: Internet, Moral Responsibility, Philosophy: Moral, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: (Monday) Smackdown Watch, Streams: (Tuesday) Hoisted from Archives, Streams: (Wednesday) Economic History, Streams: (Weekend) Reading, Streams: Cycle, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1)
Must-Read: Kenneth Arrow et al.: (2004): Are We Consuming Too Much?: "We consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness (or insufficiency) of current consumption...
January 16, 2017 at 05:04 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: Jared Bernstein: More from the 2017 ERP: "Emily Horton... and Emma Sifre.... I asked them to choose a figure from the new 2017 ERP....
January 16, 2017 at 05:01 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic (2013): Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession: "The paper presents a newly compiled and improved database of national household surveys between 1988 and 2008...
January 16, 2017 at 04:56 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Should-Read: This first from Ken Rogoff is very sensible. But IMHO it fits awkwardly with the "debt supercycle" view. We are now, after all, a decade into repair of the debt supercycle after the crash. Why then is this still a big problem? It seems to me an implicit admission that there is something much more going on than a standard debt supercycle:
Ken Rogoff: Big Danger at the Lower Bound: "Given that the Fed may struggle just to get its base interest rate up to 2% over the coming year, there will be very little room to cut if a recession hits...
January 16, 2017 at 04:52 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (2)
Jonathan Bernstein: Artists' Choices and Repeal, Replace, Delay: "Brad DeLong on what kind of president Trump will be...
...A lot here I agree with, but I think DeLong undervalues Ronald Reagan's appreciation of his audience -- his real audience, not just the one in his mind. Reagan (and not just the mythical Reagan, but, as DeLong says, the real one) was willing to back off on plans going wrong. For all of his considerable ability to believe stories that were not true, he was willing to accept that things he did could go wrong. I'm not confident Trump has that ability, and (unlike Reagan) unfortunately everything in Trump's brief political career has given him excuses for rejecting cautions from anyone.
January 15, 2017 at 07:22 PM in Streams: (Monday) Smackdown Watch, Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (3)
Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:
January 15, 2017 at 07:18 PM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Must-Reads:
Most-Recent Should-Reads:
Most-Recent Links:
January 15, 2017 at 06:49 PM in Noted Items, Streams: Equitable Growth, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (12)
Live from Cyberspace: A Proposed Twitter-Interaction Strategy: Draining Your Part of Its Cesspoo:
I have swung around to a view of Twitter (and Facebook, but I haven't gotten around to managing Facebook).
Continue reading "A Proposed Twitter-Interaction Strategy: Draining Your Part of Its Cesspool" »
January 15, 2017 at 06:49 PM in Information: Internet, Streams: Highlighted, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (17)
Editing a piece for http://vox.com. And sections that I loooooove are getting--rightly getting, I hasten to say: my editors are gods in human form whose judgment is superb--cut and dropped onto the floor.
But I have a weblog!
Continue reading "I Have a Weblog!: Productivity! and Polanyi!" »
January 15, 2017 at 03:00 PM in Economics: Inequality, History, Philosophy: Moral, Political Economy, Politics, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth, Streams: Highlighted | Permalink | Comments (3)
January 15, 2017 at 07:55 AM in History, Streams: (Friday) for the Weekend..., Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (3)
Adam Tooze: USA: Goodbye to the American Century: "The rise and fall of US hegemony. Or Donald Trump and the sunset of American hegemony...
...The American Century is over. We can tell, not only because the Americans have elected a ludicrous President, but because, for all his nationalist braggadocio, Trump’s ambitions are so modest. He aspires, after all, only to make America great again.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: Adam Tooze: Goodbye to the American Century" »
January 15, 2017 at 07:41 AM in Streams: (Weekend) Reading, Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (1)
Growth: Exponential, Convergent, Logistic: How much of this will my students this semester know? How much of this will I have to remind them? And how much of this will I have to teach them for the first time?
January 14, 2017 at 02:05 PM in Berkeley, Econ 113, Economics: Growth, Finger Exercises, Streams: Across the Wide Missouri | Permalink | Comments (4)
Must-Read: I believe Paul Krugman is right here. It looks as though Donald Trump's preferences are having very little effect on the policies of his own administration:
Paul Krugman: Infrastructure Delusions: "There will be no significant public investment program...
January 14, 2017 at 11:03 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (9)
George Orwell (1946): In Front of Your Nose: "Many recent statements in the press have declared...
...that it is almost, if not quite, impossible for us to mine as much coal as we need for home and export purposes, because of the impossibility of inducing a sufficient number of miners to remain in the pits. One set of figures which I saw last week estimated the annual ‘wastage’ of mine workers at 60,000 and the annual intake of new workers at 10,000. Simultaneously with this—and sometimes in the same column of the same paper—there have been statements that it would be undesirable to make use of Poles or Germans because this might lead to unemployment in the coal industry. The two utterances do not always come from the same sources, but there must certainly be many people who are capable of holding these totally contradictory ideas in their heads at a single moment.
Continue reading "Weekend Reading: George Orwell (1946): In Front of Your Nose" »
January 14, 2017 at 05:58 AM in Books, Philosophy: Moral, Political Economy, Politics, Science: Cognitive, Streams: (Weekend) Reading, Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (9)
Duncan Black: Eschaton: America's Worst Humans: "Chris Cillizza. I'm sure Cillizza got his career opportunities through nothing other than the pure meritocracy...
...that exists in our free market Nirvana. Certainly he got none of the breaks that blah people do. Still if he wasn't doing this, I don't see how he wouldn't be under a bridge somewhere.
Scott Lemieux: Love Is Always Scarpering, Or Cowering, Or Fawning: "This month’s Cillizza Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field Of Hackdom goes to… Chris Cillizza:
@TheFix: You should watch this Paul Ryan town hall on CNN. The guy is extremely impressive.
@OnceUponA: It is very difficult to have a working understanding of health policy and simultaneously be impressed by his answers on ACA. https://t.co/NTdpL9gTIw
Continue reading "(Early) Monday Smackdown: The Washington Post and Chris Cillizza" »
January 14, 2017 at 05:11 AM in Economics: Health, Information: Better Press Corps/Journamalism, Moral Responsibility, Politics, Streams: (Monday) Smackdown Watch, Streams: Cycle, Streams: Economics, Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (3)
Must-Read: IMHO, the bigly mistake was that neither Obama nor Emmanuel ever internalized the necessity of ending meetings with the Rubin Question: "What, two years from now, might we be desperately wishing we had done here today?" Rubin calls this the "probabilistic framework". Whatever the name, it is essential--and Obama did not have it...
Gillian Tett: Obama and the Audacity of Hindsight: "It is tempting to point out all the things that Obama could or should have done better...
January 14, 2017 at 04:37 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (8)
Must-Read: Trump's Republican Party: not the party of enterprise, but the party of rent-seekers with something to lose and of would-be rent seekers with something to gain...
Luigi Zingales: Donald Trump’s Economic Policies: Pro-Business, Not Pro-Market: "Trump is eliminating lobbyists by putting them in charge of all departments...
January 14, 2017 at 04:11 AM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (1)
Beyoncé & Tina Turner: Proud Mary:
January 13, 2017 at 06:41 PM in Music, Streams: (Friday) for the Weekend..., Streams: Cycle | Permalink | Comments (2)
Should-Read: What was my most prized and (I thought) original insight of 1991--one that I worked hard to discover and document in DeLong and Shleifer, "Princes and Merchants"--was, to Charlie Wilson 25 years earlier, a throwaway half paragraph:
Charles Wilson (1967): Trade, Society, and the State: "The two areas which in 1500 represented the richest and most advanced concentrations...
January 13, 2017 at 03:24 PM in Streams: Equitable Growth | Permalink | Comments (0)
"I now know it is a rising, not a setting, sun" --Benjamin Franklin, 1787