KANSAS: Special election April 11th! Meet James Thompson.
Here is why you should call about Gorsuch More info here.
This thread is correct (I have seen expert economists make these points as well)
Republican’s original sin on Obamacare
Laptop “ban” is bad and dangerous.
Planned parenthood and Medicaid
Managing academia
free reads from KJ Charles
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is there something here today?
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March 25, 2017 at 11:15 pm
I’m physically too exhausted to even react to the laptop ban now but honest to goodness, this really is a marathon slog through all the bad crap they keep slinging, isn’t it?
I’m taking a moment to be grateful for all the work that was done to save ACA this round. May we be able to stay this effective for as long as it takes.
March 26, 2017 at 3:13 am
About Yglesis and this blog: I forgot, this is the, “Neoliberalism does not exist because I benefit from it” crew.
“Expert economist” is about the same as a “world-class haruspicy practitioner.” See how well expert economists did in the lead-up to the largest financial cataclysm since the 1930s.
The logic of neoliberalism not existing because doing something to reverse the depredations of capitalism a bit might make your house price go down a bit is pitiful, but typically American.
March 26, 2017 at 5:44 am
It’s weird but all the economists I know were predicting the housing crisis before it happened. Hell, I knew something was wrong when we got our first mortgage and the real estate agent showed us our options. The only thing nobody predicted was how bad it was going to get.
That nobody expected thing is bs. Everyone who studied the topic knew there was a housing bubble. People who studied financial markets knew there was bad stuff going on.
But the thing about bubbles is that nobody knows when they’re going to pop. So the media feels like people are crying wolf.
We’re in a bubble right now. trump is doing things to the economy that will hurt productivity deeply and dramatically. But the markets are riding high. Who knows when it will pop. After all, I recently read an article saying that the tulip bubble happened during a plague.
March 26, 2017 at 9:08 am
How do you know we’re in one? I ask sincerely, because I don’t have any clue how actual economists look at this. I also don’t know how intelligent people who know that people’s predictions about the economy are influenced by politics correct for their own biases. The last talking head on Marketplace that sounded reasonable about this was asked if we’re in a bubble and said no (with some hesitation).
March 26, 2017 at 9:22 am
So, I’m not an expert on this, but the first line is to look at the P/E ratio (if we’re talking stocks). If the stock market is going crazy and productivity is not increasing that much, something is wrong. I think the reason people tend to have disagreements is because it is difficult to measure productivity, and often we only *know* productivity after the fact. So people will argue productivity is going up more than we’re measuring it as going up, which is true, but…
I think you look at the Case-Shiller index if we’re talking housing. Again, not my area of expertise.
There’s also other signs– like, the insane no money down balloon mortgages that banks were giving away like candy when we got our house. When badly designed credit is too easy to get, one can be pretty sure that there will be people who are going to crash hard if housing prices stop going up. Still, it took a few years for that to catch up. So I would have been predicting a crash too early. That’s the thing about bubbles, you don’t know when they’re going to pop.
When people say “the fundamentals of the economy are [strong/etc.]” — that’s similar to looking at signs like how easy it is to get credit in the housing instance. Trump is adding uncertainty, which businesses don’t like because they can’t do long-term planning. He’s making it more difficult for companies to get skilled workers and for workers to get help with home production, freeing them up for skilled production. He’s not doing anything about the failing infrastructure in the US. He’s hurting trade agreements. He’s making people worry about war. His anti-government appointees will do their best to destroy education, etc. That is, he is working at destroying the fundamentals of the American Economy. When will that all come crashing down? I don’t know. When will our next Iraq or Katrina be?
I’ll have more to say on the subject in August after I’ve listened to all the econ gossip from people in the know.
March 26, 2017 at 5:50 am
Ps a vote for stein was a vote for trump. You voted for trump. The next crash is your fault. Thanks a lot.
March 26, 2017 at 12:36 pm
N&M — Your explanation for how Trump is destroying the fundamentals of the American economy (above) is the best and clearest I’ve seen. Would you mind if I extracted it and quoted it on my blog?
Or, even better! — Could you do a post on that, which I could link to on my blog?
March 26, 2017 at 12:41 pm
Feel free to extract! I don’t think we’ll be doing a post on it any time soon. (I am currently trying really hard to not procrastinate on the second of two things I have due tomorrow.)
March 26, 2017 at 9:21 am
re: the twitter thread on middle aged deaths…
I don’t think the data shared in the 2nd tweet suggests working class black death rates *are going up* like working class white deaths. So the death spike *is* a racially specific phenomenon, but that’s another way of saying the death *rate* among working class whites has now “normalized” to that of black working class individuals.
What I really would like to see data on is the rate of US working class individuals compared to the rate of poorer individuals in different countries. In a lot of the PISA studies, the US appears to loose ground or stay stagnant even when each subgroup of students is improving, because our student demographics are tilting poorer and less white.
I will grant that the dominant media narrative around these figures of “what is happening to white working class people?” may be a reflection of racism/centering the white experience, but responding to it with “poor people are supposed to die young, white people aren’t special, neoliberalism has not changed anything” is both douchey and garbage logic.
March 26, 2017 at 9:29 am
You’d like one of the classes I’m teaching this semester. Here’s a couple of related (but not direct) links that my students shared this week:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/24/the-disease-killing-white-americans-goes-way-deeper-than-opioids/?utm_term=.5e032f32a5c5
There are a lot of very complicated things going on with health and socioeconomic status and race in the US, and we don’t know all of the answers.
We do tend to think of “white men” as the “control” group so the idea that they aren’t the baseline is a difficult one for people (*cough* male economists *cough*) to get their heads around. The baseline shouldn’t be dropping in a developed country– it would be steadily increasing.
March 29, 2017 at 5:56 pm
You have just hopelessly hooked me on KJ Charles and now I’m full of woe that there are no more Feximal stories. Also, I have spent the next month’s book budget. I blame you! (Thank you. They are wonderful.)
March 29, 2017 at 6:18 pm
Her magpie ebooks are starting to come back online. I am anxious for the second to go up so I can buy it. Also make sure you read the free short stories in this link love!
March 30, 2017 at 7:00 am
I totally read all the free ones in one night.
March 30, 2017 at 7:13 am
I’m waiting until I have all the magpie ones to read the free ones that come after book 2…
I’ve been reading some mediocre library regencies that have standard YA Brooding Hero tropes (lip biting, the heroine describing herself in the mirror, letting out the breath she didn’t know she was holding, etc. etc. etc.), and it’s just such a huge difference reading say, the casebook of Simon Fenimal. A revelation.
I do not want to be working right now because I want to read the next case! They’re just really good. Maybe I’ll be able to set them up as a reward system for something on the to-do list that I don’t want to do.
March 31, 2017 at 5:34 pm
I just remembered my birthday money from the in laws!!! Well, that’s all going towards the rest of the series (they’re all on Google play books now). Catnip!
March 31, 2017 at 6:36 pm
ooooh!
March 31, 2017 at 6:38 pm
On amazon too! Getting the rest now!!!!!
April 7, 2017 at 4:49 pm
PSA: just read KJ Charles’s Unseen Attraction and it was TERRIBLE. Awkwardly drawn pseudo- aspergers POC, terrible character development, randomly inserted naked interludes. Reads like a trunk novel that should have stayed there, and if it had been a physical book I would have returned it to the store for a refund after 20 pages.
April 7, 2017 at 5:49 pm
Oh no! I did read it and did not like it much (that’s the one mentioned at the end of this post), but I’m also not a huge fan of that literature as a whole, and it seemed pretty representative of the genre. I do have the second book in the series on my wishlist in the hope it will be better.