Debt is an effect of wealth, not desperation. That’s true for individuals and corporations, but also governments. The power of compounding vivifies this truth, and explains why Apple has lots of debt but the corner store doesn’t, and the U.S. has tens of trillions of debt, but Haiti next to nothing. The Washington Post’s […]
There’s No Such Thing As ‘Exorbitant Privilege,’ There’s Just Production Read More »
Low and falling birthrates are not an economic threat. Not remotely. The latter is not a Malthusian or Paul Ehrlich-ian statement as much as it’s a statement about production. The babies being born today will grow up and individually produce at levels that would have literally required thousands, and realistically tens of thousands of
Low Birthrates Are a Market Signal of a Rich, Rich Future Read More »
“What will you say about Trump and his tariffs if he gets high-tariff countries to zero?” Trump supporters have asked the previous question endless times since “Liberation Day” and surely before. The answer is simple: we’ll be worse off. We will be because the question is nonsensical. Americans will be the losers of Trump’s
Even If Trump Gets Them to ‘Zero,’ Americans Will Be Worse Off Read More »
Presidents get the dollar they want, and George W. Bush wanted a weaker one. Bush’s departure from the Reagan/Clinton era of a largely strong, stable dollar as a measure of constant objective value was one of his worst policy decisions, and it’s one that no president subsequent to Bush has chosen to reverse. When
George W. Bush Lit Dollar Fire On Which Trump Throws Match Read More »
Particularly amid the economic difficulties brought on by President Trump’s tariffs, there’s growing urgency within the Republican Party to mitigate the tariff damage with an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Unknown is why. The tax cuts were Keynesian in design, hence not economically stimulative. Evidence supporting the above claim
What’s So Great About the ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’? Read More »
The EU is soon to intimately understand a truth too often lost on politicians and regulators: the only closed economy is the world economy. This will become apparent in the aftermath of the EU’s $570 million and $228 million fines respectively levied on Apple and Meta. The EU’s regulators will describe the fines as
The EU Will Soon Discover the Only Closed Economy Is the World’s Read More »
The future will be defined by economic growth that will make the present appear limp by comparison. Driverless cars will loom large precisely because they’ll free humans from so much work. It’s what we’re not doing that powers us forward, not what we’re doing. And to be a passenger in a Waymo-equipped car is
The Profound and Compounding Growth Implications of Waymo Read More »
Jobs are the easy part. It’s worth remembering every time a politician talks about “jobs created” by his or her economic program. They’re missing the point. True economic growth is an effect of the work not required of humans. SalesForce founder Marc Benioff explained all of this so well in a recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Marc Benioff Wisely Reminds Us What Economic Growth Is Read More »
“Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow.” That was the headline of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece by conservative Hoover Institution scholar Michael Boskin on March 6, 2009. With stocks on a downward trend, Boskin concluded that Obama’s policies were the culprit. The Boskin piece is evidence of how members of the right not infrequently respond to
Trump’s Radicalism, Like Obama’s, Will Stop the Market Slide Read More »
President Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S. If we forget that he can’t do what he claims he will, we can at least think about the horrid economic implications of any politician reviving the past. To do so is to repel the humans that drive all progress, followed by a
Better To Bomb a City Than To Bring Back Manufacturing Jobs Read More »
