Category Archives: The Economy

Wisdom vs Folly: Compare And Contrast

January 13, 2024 – 3:50 pm

I’ve just run across a Twitter (okay, “X”) thread so remarkable that I’m going to unroll it for you right here. The principals are Emmett Shear, a serial Internet entrepreneur who has just been selected as CEO of OpenAI, and a science-fiction author by the name of Devon Eriksen. How did I come across this? […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Reason and Philosophy, Politics, Reaction, Society and Culture | Comments (9)

The Relativity Of Principle

January 8, 2024 – 2:55 pm

Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella links to two contrasting articles. The first, by Binyamin Applebaum, an editor at the New York Times, is a panegyric on the presidency of Joe Biden. The second, by Peter van Buren at American Conservative, is a jeremiad called “Evening in America”. It’s a stark and fascinating juxtaposition. In […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in General, Society and Culture, Politics, Rubbish, Reaction | Comments (1)

Overkill?

March 22, 2020 – 11:18 pm

I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that our reaction to this Wuhan virus, if it keeps the economy comatose for any appreciable length of time, will do more damage than anything the disease itself might have wrought. On the more benign end of the scale, we have at minimum a crisis that has already been […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Science, Foreign Affairs, Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (4)

ZMan on tariffs

March 4, 2018 – 1:30 pm

In a recent post I declined to comment on the proposed imposition of new tariffs, pleading ignorance of the subject. The uncommonly astute blogger calling himself “ZMan”, however, has a definite opinion. An excerpt: The fact is, the current trade regime ushered in after the Cold War, has proven to be the boondoggle critics like […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Foreign Affairs, Reaction | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Welcome To Wal*Mart!

October 3, 2014 – 10:32 pm

We heard some crowing today about the latest jobs report. What you didn’t hear is who got those jobs. It turns out that all of the gain went to people aged 55 and older, who picked up 230,000 jobs. (You can imagine what sort of jobs those are.) Meanwhile, those in the prime earning years […]

By Malcolm | Comments (0)

Triple-Decker

May 5, 2014 – 8:57 pm

Our pal Mangan directed us yesterday to an interesting item, from Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs, on the idea of ‘political correctness’ as an expression, not of one’s actual beliefs, but as a ‘signaling’ mechanism employed to enhance status. (This is not a new idea, but this is a good treatment of it.) Inside the […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (0)

The Minimum Wage, Part 2

March 13, 2014 – 11:52 pm

A while back I agreed to comment on a New York Times editorial advocating a rise in the minimum wage. (The editorial, entitled The Clear Benefits of a Higher Wage, is here.) The brief editorial’s main point is that a minimum-wage increase cannot be reliably expected to cause enough of an increase in unemployment to […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (11)

The Minimum Wage, Part 1

February 27, 2014 – 1:30 pm

There’s been a lot of argument lately about whether to raise the minimum wage, and I haven’t had much to say about it in these pages. But a comment in a recent thread got me digging into the topic more deeply than I had before, and so it’s time for a post about it, I […]

By Malcolm | Comments (4)

Suppose You Wanted To Ruin A Nation

March 11, 2013 – 11:18 pm

Well, that’s a big job, but it can be done! You just have to work hard, and keep the goal in view. As with all big jobs, the trick is to break it down into smaller parts. Here’s Victor Davis Hanson on how to take care of the economy. (Hat tip: Bill Keezer.) Forgive me, […]

By Malcolm | Comments (0)

Another Cobblestone On The Road To Hell

February 19, 2013 – 1:01 am

Milton Freidman responds to President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage. Here, from beyond the grave.

By Malcolm | Comments (0)

A Cautionary Tale

January 5, 2013 – 5:54 pm

California, not so long ago the flagship of the American federation, has been going under for quite a while now: overfreighted with lavish entitlements, embarnacled with suffocating regulation, and holed below the waterline by demographic disintegration. Because attacking the root of the problem by reducing the expansion of government is for deep-blue California an ideological […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Politics, Society and Culture | Comments (18)

Change We Can Believe In

January 4, 2013 – 1:08 pm

In this brief item, Jim Pethokoukis weighs the various options for dealing with the looming debt-ceiling battle. Among them, in case you haven’t heard: trillion-dollar platinum coins.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Politics | Comments (2)

Currency Wars

October 23, 2012 – 5:49 pm

Do forgive me for all that doom & gloom in our previous thread. Here, this’ll cheer you up. From Jim Rickards.

By Malcolm | Comments (5)

The Hell-Bound Train

September 25, 2012 – 4:00 pm

The latest Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report has the U.S. ranked eighteenth, down from second place in 200o. Well, home of the brave, still, maybe. We’ll see.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (1)

“Trickle Down”: Fact And Fancy

September 24, 2012 – 7:19 pm

Here’s an outstanding essay by economist Thomas Sowell on widely held misconceptions regarding the historical effects of varying tax rates on the wealthy. An excerpt: The very idea that profits “trickle down’ to workers depicts the economic sequence of events in the opposite order from that in the real world. Workers must first be hired, […]

By Malcolm | Comments (21)

Ask Chuck!

November 29, 2011 – 9:12 pm

As you already know, the Congressional deficit-reduction “supercommittee” failed to find a paltry $1.2 trillion dollars worth of trimmable fat in the Federal budget over the next ten years. Given that you could confiscate all corporate profits each year in America and still only cover six months of government spending, we’re obviously living way, way […]

By Malcolm | Comments (0)

Wow, Pretty Super

November 20, 2011 – 7:08 pm

Well, it looks as if the deficit-reduction “supercommittee” is about to fail. Political analyst Larry Sabato tweeted: Could it really be that 12 able legislators will fail utterly at the most important task they’ll ever be asked to do? Yeah, I’m sure he’s shocked, along with the rest of us. U.S. government spending is an […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Military, Politics | Comments (8)

Bears In The China Shop

November 17, 2011 – 10:42 pm

In the discussion we linked to yesterday (well worth your time, by the way, if you are interested in matters military and strategic), George Friedman argued that although China has made a Great Leap Forward beyond anything Mao could have imagined, it is now reaching a point of economic fatigue, if not exhaustion. In particular, […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

World Wide Web

October 20, 2011 – 10:18 am

Interesting item from New Scientist: the global corporate network that dominates the world’s economy. Here.

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture | Comments (2)

Whither Hence?

October 3, 2011 – 8:36 pm

Poking around at NRO just now, I ran across some solid pessimism from PayPal founder Peter Thiel. In a piece called “The End of the Future“, he argues that the steady technological progress that pulled the world’s economy upward for a very long time has stalled. The essay seems a shade too gloomy, even for […]

By Malcolm | Also posted in Society and Culture, Technology | Comments (5)

A Poor Standard

August 9, 2011 – 9:25 pm

In today’s Times there’s a harsh look at Standard and Poor’s ratings system, by Nate Silver. An excerpt: [T]he evidence from the past five years suggests that it may be worthwhile to adopt a contrarian investing strategy that specifically bets against S.&P.’s ratings. If you were trying to predict a country’s default risk today, based […]

By Malcolm | Comments (0)