Unprofitable work is abundant. Profitable work is scarce. Businesses have pushed the unprofitable labor burdens and work to its consumer. ‘What’s next’ is a capitalist system collapsing in on itself. [ … ]

For any system to endure, it must maintain a built-in capacity to self-correct: that is, it must generate accurate informational feedback about dangerous asymmetries and auto-correct with behavioral feedback. This is true of ecosystems and [ … ]

Everyone wants an abundance of “good paying” jobs, but employers can only afford to pay employees if the work being done is profitable. What’s abundant and what’s scarce? The question matters [ … ]

Previously, I reviewed the Currency Unions and Trade Literature here, and then shared some of my students’ referee reports of a recent Glick and Rose (2016) paper here. My undergraduates [ … ]

In today’s irreligious and indeed antireligious climate the fashion is to dismiss Christianity as crude superstition, and to babble wisely about the separation of church and state. This is unfortunate, [ … ]

We need to encourage honesty above optimism. Once we can speak honestly, there is a foundation for optimism. Psychoanalysis teaches that one cause of depression is repressed anger. The rising [ … ]

A VAT (value added tax) with no other tax — no income, corporate, estate, etc. etc. etc. — is pretty much the economists’ ideal. But how do you make it [ … ]

These are comments I gave on “Inflating away the public debt? An empirical assessment” by Jens Hilscher, Alon Aviv, and Ricardo Reis at the Becker-Friedman Institute Government Debt: Constraints and [ … ]

In a recent paper, Glick and Rose (2016) suggest that the Euro led to a staggering 50% increase in trade. To me, this sounded a bit dubious, particularly given my [ … ]

Time-travel thriller about a man living in 2013 tweeting desperate warnings to his 2017 self who has become President