Did I get your attention? Ok, let me preface by adding “at some point” to the title. After all, to say that the present political climate in Washington makes a Green New Deal impossible might even be an understatement. And there really is nothing inevitable about such a policy breakthrough. One could alternatively imagine an endless political war of attrition. Yet most thinking people are coming to realize, however slowly, that continuing to ignore the global environmental crisis spells ruin …
The 1.9 Trillion-Dollar Question
February 14, 2021The truth is that approval of the Biden Administration’s proposed stimulus package is inconceivable without major revision. We know that. But let us for the moment ignore the partisan political challenges that make passage impossible. Pretend, in other words, that Congress is unified and ready to rubber stamp whatever plan Biden advances. The 1.9 trillion-dollar question then becomes whether the size of his present proposal is too large – or not large enough. The political arguments on each side are …
Is Progress “Progressive?”
February 6, 2021It is not only because I am presently running a seminar on progress that I write about it here, although it has inspired me. Economic progress is a subject that has interested me for my entire career, and much of my research and writing is devoted to it. But progress is an idea that goes far beyond economics. It is, for example, related to politics, which is from where we hear the term “progressive.” But is progress progressive? What does progress even …
Remember Climate Change?
January 31, 2021“I’ve starred in a lot of science fiction movies and, let me tell you something, climate change is not science fiction. This is a battle in the real world, it is impacting us right now.” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) The current pandemic has made us mostly, at least temporarily, forget climate change. Climate change will be with us for a long time to come, so keeping it newsworthy was challenging even before Covid-19 hit us. But it is important not to forget about it. …
Paradox of Thrift No Longer
January 7, 2021I want to try to bring together a few points about which I’ve posted previously. My motivation is to address an important article last week in the New York Times (January 1st) by Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai. Perhaps its early for such a declaration, but the phenomenon they reveal might require a rethinking of Keynes’s celebrated “paradox of thrift.” The authors point out that much of the recent stock market boom can be attributed to an inordinate increase in …
GDP Growth: Seriously Flawed but Not Going Anywhere
December 31, 2020“Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one starving soul would like to know.” (Eduardo Galeano) U.S. GDP plunged in the second quarter of 2020 at an annualized rate of 31.7 percent. From the standpoint of history, the report was shocking (although perhaps not surprising, given the abrupt policy response to the pandemic). Equally shocking (and unsurprising) was the news for the third quarter, which reported an unprecedented growth rate of 33.1 percent. Yet for most people …
The Great Divergence “on Drugs”
December 6, 2020Back in July I wrote about a “great divergence” that has been occurring between the stock market and the real economy. Yet today one might consider that recent developments put the lie to my claim. After all, while stock prices soar, the unemployment rate continues to fall. The November number was 6.7 percent, down from 6.9 percent in October. With imminent release of a new Covid-19 vaccine expected, all the major equity indices appear – almost irrationally – to have …
Could We Have Too Much Fiscal Policy?
December 3, 2020President-elect Biden’s formation of his economic “team” has been dominating the headlines. Unduly, I aver, because there are far more pressing issues than which Wall Street or otherwise pro-business cronies Biden ends up selecting. Most notably, of course, is the matter of another desperately needed stimulus package. Against all odds, it appears that moderate Senate Democrats and Republicans are working together on a compromise bill. Just yesterday the group, led by Senators Collins (R-Maine) and Warner (D-Virginia), proposed a $900 …
The Logistics, Ethics, and Political Economy of a Covid-19 Vaccine
November 29, 2020Recent news about Pfizer’s and Moderna’s progress synthesizing a Covid-19 vaccine has been met by an understandably ebullient global reaction. According to the CDC, the first batch will be available to Americans before the end of 2020. Analysts believe that positive news about the vaccine – and really, how could the news be better? – explains much of the most recent surge in stock prices. More substantively, if the optimism were well founded it would not be unreasonable to expect …
Inflation? Really?
November 25, 2020Last week my interest was aroused by an article written by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (November 18th) in which he discusses a recent book by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan. In the article he provides a number of reasons why we might expect higher – possibly much higher – inflation in the coming years. And an article in today’s Wall Street Journal by David Harrison similarly suggests that, following successful introduction of a Covid-19 vaccine, widespread and pent-up …