It was predicted early in the year that COVID-19 could kill as many as 2.2 million Americans. A variety of other models showed between 1 and 2 million fatalities, and they received frontpage news coverage for days and weeks. But 9 months into this pandemic, we haven't witnessed it. Is the answer to this question, … Continue reading How 2 Million American Lives Were Saved
Kitchin cycle. Juglar cycle. Kondratiev wave. Boom-bust. A whole bunch of malarkey. I don’t think recessions are nowadays really the result of ‘cycles,’ which is a term that sort of implies they are part of some natural order of things, like moon phases or the seasons. I think recessions are like ice ages. They are … Continue reading The Replacement of the Ordinary Business Cycle by Irregular and Preventable Shocks
In 1912, Italian statistician Corrado Gini introduced a concept (which came to take his name) called the Gini Coefficient. The coefficient, which is a measure of statistical dispersion, is used primarily to measure the level of economic inequality, such as income, wealth, and consumption inequality. This coefficient is calculated by subtracting from cumulative income in … Continue reading The Consequences of Extreme Inequality
A rallying call for many in the progressive left, Medicare For All was effectively introduced and championed by Senators Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party Presidential Primaries. Advocates, of which there are many, claim that Medicare For All would bring the United States in line with the rest of the world, promising … Continue reading Why ‘Medicare For All’ Is The Wrong Approach
I recently thought of a new way to measure the burden of the national debt, though I'm sure I'm not the first. When we measure the national debt, we typically take either gross federal debt, or federal debt held by the public as a share of gross domestic product. When we do that, we come … Continue reading Putting The National Debt Into Perspective
Introduced as part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Social Security redefined the role of the government in American life in an almost revolutionary way, similar to the widespread adoption of public education. Despite it's out-sized impact, Old Age and Survivors Insurance (what most people refer to when they speak of Social Security) continues to be … Continue reading Investigating Social Security Privatization
I was thinking about the stock market and how decade after decade it's able to deliver high rates of return and ended up formulating a primitive hypothesis based on the data I gathered. Corporate stock capitalization is cumulative sum of net stock flow, so stock market growth should be determined by the source of net … Continue reading Capital Accumulation and Rates of Return
The pace of economic progress in America has been just shy of miserable over these past few years. Sure, the stock market is booming, unemployment (until COVID) had reached a half-century low, and most Americans were satisfied with the state of the economy and their personal financial and material well being. None of this is … Continue reading We Can’t Quite Call Sluggish Growth Endemic
In early January 2003, a interesting bill was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee: H.R.269 Simplified USA Tax Act of 2003. This bill, sponsored by then-Representative of Pennsylvania Phil English, would, among other things, replace the federal income, estate, and gift taxes with a "progressive consumption tax." In the other words, a tax … Continue reading Discussing The Progressive Consumption Tax
Progressives and social democrats in America have espoused the virtues of comprehensive social insurance, universal healthcare, universal college, universal housing, among other things. I believe generally liberals and socialist have two different core reasons for their support of public programs like these, and I'd like to discuss my views and approach to public policy with … Continue reading Social Capital and Public Policy
