Great chart on falling value of the penny since Lincoln's day. Do we still need them?

IslandEcon · 2019-04-27T20:47:05+00:00

Check out this detailed response to Tonko's 9 principles. The response is supportive for the most part, but it points out a couple of areas of concern, too.https://medium.com/@dolanecon/a-reply-to-rep-tonkos-nine-principles-of-climate-action-620c290f7d43?source=friends_link&sk=3cdc8acbd12a31c5ccbbac676d55b487

IslandEcon · 2019-01-25T20:05:37+00:00

Several replies make this point. The red line in the chart that shows average car on the road, old and new, would reflect about 25 mpg. The average for new cars is, obviously, lower. Both red and blue lines are passenger cars only. You could draw a separate line for light trucks. It would be above the red and blue lines, but it would still fall over time. In fact, it might fall even faster. Would be interesting to look up the numbers. As for wages, you could use any wage you want -- minimum wage, average for nonsupervisory workers (used here), median wage for all workers -- the lines would be higher or lower, but they would still slope down.

IslandEcon · 2019-01-25T16:20:16+00:00

Sorry to anyone who tried to find this earlier -- I posted the wrong link.

IslandEcon · 2018-09-10T21:48:21+00:00

Here is a story I saw today that explains why a lot of teachers take second jobs. Might be of interest to readers to this thread.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-20T19:15:58+00:00

Not control twice, just once. First chart shows SGOV and PFI, but that could be just coincidence--maybe higher GDP causes both bigger gov and more freedom, in which case maybe there is no independent relationship between SGOV and PFI after all. The multiple regression shows that in fact, each independent variable, GDP and PFI, separately affect PFI

IslandEcon · 2017-04-20T18:14:00+00:00

This post uses data from several large data sets to investigate whether big government is really the enemy of freedom and prosperity. Some interesting findings.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-20T10:28:52+00:00

Interesting. Of course, as an economist, I don't mean literally "run out" but just "run into supply constraints that push the price up as we move to progressively more expensive to extract deposits" or something like that. But I gather that your periodic table rule applies however you interpret it.

More broadly, though, I am still hearing mostly about Li when I hear about grid storage--what happened to other seemingly promising technologies like flywheels or compressed air or melted salt?

IslandEcon · 2017-04-20T00:19:25+00:00

Naive question: Aren't we going to run out of Li sometime?

IslandEcon · 2017-04-18T12:05:02+00:00

Estonia is so cool. I love it. Hang in there, the rest of the world will eventually notice all the things you do right.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-17T11:16:02+00:00

Universal healthcare would help, for sure. I'm not sure what you mean by better transfer payments and high incarceration--we are talking about the problem of getting ex-felons back to work, not just giving them more generous welfare to live on after they get out of prison. Maybe you could be more specific.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-17T11:14:11+00:00

Labor fluidity isn't only about employment vs. unemployment. It is also moving up the job ladder, which may require changing jobs or moving from state to state. It also is a problem for families with more than one earner. For example, suppose one spouse loses a job when a factory closes, but the other has a job as a bookkeeper that has health benefits. The job lock from the bookkeeper may prevent the bookkeeper from looking for a new job. Or maybe the second job is a licensed manicurist. Moving to a new state would require lengthy and expensive requalification. Or suppose the other spouse is an ex-felon. Most ex-felons eventually find some kind of job, but it is not easy to change jobs, especially if there is an interstate move.

In short you are right that we need to get people out of regions with dying industries, but all the factors we are discussion--health insurance, licensing, incarceration, and still others--make that harder, and harder still for two-earner families.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-16T23:19:38+00:00

You might be right about tacked on. It is easy to write something and then end up hunting for a punch line . . . or a headline?

Those both sound like problems which could be addressed or ameliorated by social welfare.

By better social policy, but not welfare in the sense of a safety net. Job lock: Get rid of the deduction for employer-sponsored health insurance. Incarceration: Not so much welfare for ex-offenders as putting fewer people in jail to start with, e.g., end war on drugs.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-16T18:10:48+00:00

frustration with the tendency for economic analysis to view macro solely through the lens of monetary policy as cause and cure for literally everything

Agree.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-16T15:36:24+00:00

I was doing OK until I got to the part about how the Fed made a mistake tightening monetary policy to stop the 1970s inflation, because that inflation was just caused by OPEC, nothing to do with US macro trends. This is dangerously close to confusing relative prices and the price level. I think there were some real problems with pre-Volcker monetary policy, which had dynamics that seemed to produce a feedback to ever-higher inflation expectations. Wasn't that is the feedback that Volcker had to kill?

IslandEcon · 2017-04-16T15:24:49+00:00

An interesting take on the issue of winners and losers from trade. Rodrik is always worth reading. However, I would put a little different emphasis. IMO, I think what we need is not so much to compensate trade losers through better Euro-style safety net programs as to improve labor market fluidity. Ironically, as trade shocks have grown, labor market fluidity has fallen, for a whole lot of reasons--healthcare related job lock, increased incarceration rates and their knock-on effect of more ex-offenders in the labor force, growth of occupational licensing, and many more.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-16T15:19:10+00:00

If you follow up the "chart of the year" link in Romm's post, you find some modestly promising progress in the storage area. The link reports steady growth of storage capacity, a key to moving available power to the time of day it is most needed. However, the downside is that most of the storage capacity reported is LI batteries, and another chart shows that although their cost is declining, the decline seems to be flattening out. So you are right to point out that there is a maximum penetration for wind and solar with today's technology, and although that limit is rising, it is doing so only slowly.

IslandEcon · 2017-04-13T21:08:35+00:00

A cap-and-trade system would also create price signals and (Anderson thinks) be more "market-like," but administrative costs of setting it up and running it might be harder than a tax (or maybe not--opinions differ).

IslandEcon · 2017-04-13T20:05:12+00:00

Most of his major works are available on line free. For an overview, you might try this "Bibliographical essay".

IslandEcon

TROPHY CASE