Read this classic Esquire essay from 1968. Police brutality was way worse back then. They just massacred people in some cases. White supremacist militias were more dangerous and shot more people. Entire neighborhoods burned for days. It was close to…
Blog Archives
Racial progress: compare the riots of 1967 with the riots today. We’ve come a long way baby.
Posted in Discrimination, Violence & Peace
I sold my stocks. I’m an economist who usually doesn’t believe in market timing, but the market looks irrationally exuberant right now.
First let’s look at the economic fundamentals right now: GDP has crashed by more than it has since the Great Depression due to a pandemic with no end in sight. Unemployment is higher than it has ever been since the…
Posted in Macro
Black lives matter more in countries with fewer guns. Even most police don’t need guns.
As I’ve written before, I’m not a gun-control advocate because there are lots of other factors that can reduce violence that are more politically feasible. For example, Franklin Zimring has numerous suggestions for how to change the rules of engagement…
Posted in Discrimination, Violence & Peace
Prejudice is inefficient and often hurts the people with the prejudices — sometimes as much or more than their targets.
Inequality due to discrimination is inefficient and can even hurt the people at the top. For example, the slave states were economically backward and although the white elites were rich, they weren’t growing the size of their economy as much…
Posted in Discrimination, Inequality
Long-term trends in manufacturing, farming, and protectionism
Peter Drucker was one the most influential management scholars of the 20th century. In 2000 he wrote a special report for The Economist magazine to think about changes over the 20th century and looking towards the 21st. The 20th century…
Posted in Globalization & International
Some basic economics of the covid-19 pandemic
In 2007, the St. Louis Fed summarized research about the 1918 influenza pandemic and used it to predict what would happen in a pandemic like the present covid-19 crisis. Their predictions have been pretty accurate. For example, the report predicted…
Bush and his team were SOOO much better than Trump and his team.
Once again I find myself longing for the good old days of the George W. Bush administration which was so much more honest and competent. And they weren’t racist nor corrupt. Here is Bush’s chief economic advisor on what should…
Medianism 