Henry Blodget Wrong Again

It’s the weekend and that means another ‘time to spread the wealth’ diatribe from Business Insider click baiter in chief and disgraced analyst, Henry Blodget: Business Insider More: America Inequality Sorry, But There’s No ‘Law Of Capitalism’ That You Have To Pay Employees As Little As Possible One reason the U.S. economy is still weak… Continue reading Henry Blodget Wrong Again

Bay Area Home Prices Keep Going Up

Case-Shiller index finds San Francisco home prices jump 23 percent from year ago San Francisco home prices enjoyed an annual gain of 23.1 percent, second only to Las Vegas’ 24.9 percent rise, according to S&P/Case-Shiller home-price indexes released Tuesday. The composite 20-city home-price index was up 13.2 percent in January from a year earlier, with… Continue reading Bay Area Home Prices Keep Going Up

It Pays to Be Smart

From The Atlantic; A new study finds that nine of the 10 most lucrative degrees in America are in computer science programs at elite colleges. And no degree in America is more valuable than a computer-science major at Stanford, Columbia, or Berkeley. Notably, the most valuable non-computer-science major in the country is also at Stanford:… Continue reading It Pays to Be Smart

Wealth Inequality is Here to Stay But Won’t Lead to Crisis

Unlike most new releases, there is a considerable hype surrounding Thomas Piketty’s, new book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Because the empirical evidence doesn’t lend itself to the Marxist’s capitalism being self-limiting prophecy, Piketty’s conclusion is the most likely outcome: growing inequality is permanent. We argue that inequality is optimal to economic growth, or a… Continue reading Wealth Inequality is Here to Stay But Won’t Lead to Crisis

Is partisanship holding back good policy in the abortion debate?

IN 2001, Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago proposed an explanation for why the crime in the U.S. declined so dramatically since the 1990s. Understandably, the kneejerk reaction of the left overshadowed the merits of the study. Unfortunately, the right’s fixation on ‘pro life’ is preventing potentially good policy. The category of abortions for… Continue reading Is partisanship holding back good policy in the abortion debate?

In Praise of Low Wages

The boom of the freelancer economy, temp economy, and service sector is part of a growing trend where people are being paid for the value they truly create, instead of the inflated wages of the pre-2008 economy. This helps restore the equilibrium between labor and capital, which until recently was too skewed in favor of… Continue reading In Praise of Low Wages

The Success of Reaganomics

A few days ago one of the architects of Reaganomics, Murray Weidenbaum, passed away. Looking back, Reaganomics was a success. ECONOMY BEFORE REAGAN When President Reagan entered office in 1981, he faced actually much worse economic problems than Obama faced in 2009: Three worsening recessions starting in 1969 were about to culminate in the worst… Continue reading The Success of Reaganomics

No, it’s not time for a basic income

The concept of a basic income has gotten a lot of traction among liberals and libertarians as a solution for placating the millions of unemployed in the wake of rising structural unemployment and obsolescence of old industries. A basic income would allow individuals to become self-sufficient without the bureaucracy and inefficiencies of traditional welfare, or… Continue reading No, it’s not time for a basic income