It would have been smart to do it 26 years ago, when Al Gore was first pushing it—and we got it through the House and fell short by two votes in the Senate: **George Akerlof _et al._**: _[Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends](https://www.wsj.com/articles/economists-statement-on-carbon-dividends-11547682910)_: Bipartisan agreement on how to combat climate change: Global climate change is a serious problem calling for immediate national action. Guided by sound economic principles, we are united in the following policy recommendations... >1. ...A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future. >2. A carbon tax should increase every year until emissions reductions goals are met and be revenue neutral to avoid debates over the size of government. A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development. It will also accelerate the diffusion of carbon-efficient goods and services. >3. A sufficiently robust and gradually rising carbon tax will replace the need for various carbon regulations that are less efficient. Substituting a... Continue reading

**Harry Brighouses**: _[Marina Hyde Competition](http://crookedtimber.org/2019/01/17/marina-hyde-competition/)_: "Yesterday’s Marina Hyde... contains... 'voluminously overcoated Jacob Rees-Mogg, who still resembles an 11-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg sitting on Nanny’s shoulders for a nursery game called Disaster Capitalist’s Bluff'... affectedly shambling figure of Boris Johnson–not so much a statesman as an Oxfam donation bag torn open by a fox'... One sentence descriptions, please, of politicians who are unsuited to office, in the style of Marina Hyde... ---- #noted #orangehairedbabonns Continue reading

**Comment of the Day: Ronald Brakels**: _[In Australia we'd just say Lewis CK is an arsehole](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/comment-of-the-day-pinkybum-what-is-going-on-this-morning-over-at-national-review-is-it-worth-reading-no.html?cid=6a00e551f080038834022ad3cba430200b#comment-6a00e551f080038834022ad3cba430200b)_: "We don't have school shootings in Australia for 2 reasons: (1) It is much harder to obtain firearms. But this is only part of it. (2) The second reason is when people say shit about children who saw their friends die like Louis CK did, people say, 'You're a fuckwit, mate'. And then those people don't get gigs and they don't get paid. If you're a 'ha ha' fuckwit maybe you can find work, but not if you're a fuckwit fuckwit. Less access to firearms definitely helps, but so does a culture that encourages people to ask themselves, 'Am I a fuckwit?' before a mass shooting gets past its initial planning stage... ---- #commentoftheday Continue reading

If you have not already read all of the WCEG's top 12 of 2018, go read them now: **Equitable Growth**: _[Top 12 of 2018](https://equitablegrowth.org/equitable-growths-top-12-of-2018/)_: "The effects of wealth taxation on wealth accumulation and wealth inequality.... Why macroeconomics should further embrace distributional economics.... The links between stagnating wages and buyer power in U.S. supply chains.... U.S. income growth has been stagnant. To what degree depends on how you measure it.... Income inequality and aggregate demand in the United States.... Presentation: U.S. Inequality and Recent Tax Changes.... The latest research on the efficacy of raising the minimum wage above $10 in six U.S. cities.... Competitive Edge: There is a lot to fix in U.S. antitrust enforcement today.... Labor Day is a time to reflect on reviving workers’ power in the U.S. economy.... Kaldor and Piketty’s facts: The rise of monopoly power in the United States.... How the rise of market power in the United States may explain some macroeconomic puzzles.... Puzzling over U.S. wage growth... ---- #noted #equitablegrowth Continue reading

_[14th Amendment](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv)_: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws... ---- #noted Continue reading

Robert Bork and his followers' belief that the test for anticompetitive behavior was whether it could be proved anticompetitive _in theory_ beyond a reasonable doubt was poisonous. And here we see people having to argue against it again in a new context: **Jonathan B. Baker and Fiona Scott Morton**: _[Antitrust Enforcement Against Platform MFNs](https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/antitrust-enforcement-against-platform-mfns)_: "Antitrust enforcement against anticompetitive... pricing parity provisions... can help protect competition in online markets.... These contractual provisions may be employed by a variety of online platforms offering, for example, hotel and transportation bookings, consumer goods, digital goods, or handmade craft products. They have been the subject of antitrust enforcement in Europe but have drawn only limited antitrust scrutiny in the United States... >...Our Feature explains why MFNs employed by online platforms can harm competition by keeping prices high and discouraging the entry of new platform rivals, through both exclusionary and collusive mechanisms, notwithstanding the possibility that some MFNs may facilitate investment by limiting customer freeriding. We discuss ways by which government enforcers in the United States and private plaintiffs could potentially reach anticompetitive platform MFNs under the Sherman Act, and the litigation challenges such cases present... ---- #noted #monopoly Continue reading

**Marina Hyde**: _[Welcome to the Westminster apocalypse. Have you thought about theocracy instead?](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/16/westminster-apocalypse-may-tories-opportunity)_: "Here comes the affectedly shambling figure of Boris Johnson—not so much a statesman as an Oxfam donation bag torn open by a fox–who could conceivably still end up prime minister of no-deal Britain. May needed to go again to the EU 'with a high heart, fortified by the massive rejection of the House of Commons', judged Johnson, speaking as always like a Taiwanese news animation of Winston Churchill. In the meantime, 'we should be actively preparing for no deal with ever more enthusiasm'... ---- #noted #brexit #globalization #orangehairedbaboons Continue reading

**Daniel Larison**: _[Threat Inflation and "The Jungle Grows Back"](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/threat-inflation-and-the-jungle-grows-back/)_: "Damir Marusic has written an incisive review of Robert Kagan’s _The Jungle Grows Back_.... 'Kagan... rues the fact that... no bogeyman big enough to keep Americans focused on maintaining their preeminent position in the world exists.... Kagan therefore makes an attempt to cast first Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and then Xi Jinping’s China, as authoritarian challengers and potential threats to the American way of life...' The end of the Cold War was a calamity for many hawks because it deprived them of a sufficiently powerful and menacing adversary, and the history of U.S. foreign policy over the last three decades has been the desperate search for a suitable replacement... ---- #noted #globalization #orangehairedbaboons Continue reading

**Note to Self**: Enjoyed Cherryh and Fancher's _Alliance Rising_ very much, but... I wish I had read something else this past week and had saved this for five years from now, when The Hinder Stars II, III, and... IV? would be out... For reasons I do not fully understand, these days publishers seem to want to greenlight books where the office say: “and we have already written to sequels!” This then creates the problem of how to end the first book with a satisfactory plot resolution well still leaving hey bigger story open for the sequels. It is a hard problem. And, much as I enjoyed reading _Alliance Rising_, Cherryh and Fancher did not quite manage to make it work. Mind you, it is close—If only Jen-and-Ross Together had been given twice the screen time, 40% rather than 20% of the book, it would have been a wonderful Happy-for-Now romance In addition to all of its other excellences. And overshadowing it all is that it is all going to end very badly for a great many of the major characters: Because I do not remember hearing about them in any previous Cherryh book, I fear for the ships _Rights of... Continue reading

1. _[Global North research university problem](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/global-north-research-university-problem-speaker-my-major-concern-is-how-can-i-be-interested-in-fewer-things.html)_: Speaker: "My major concern is: How can I be interested in fewer things?... 2. _[Welcome to the 21st-century](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/welcome-to-the-21st-century-in-which-my-coffee-machine-says-that-it-is-booting.html)_, in which my coffee machine says that it is “booting”... 3. _[For the Weekend: 2018 In Weather](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/for-the-weekend-2018-in-weather.html)_ 4. _[Costs and Benefits of International Capital Mobility: Reply to Bhagwati: Hoisted from 20 Years Ago](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/costs-and-benefits-of-international-capital-mobility-reply-to-bhagwati-hoisted-from-20-years-ago.html)_: Needless to say, time has left me a lot wiser: We need to design economies so that they can operate without disaster even when deregulatory clowns like those of the George W. Bush or the Donald J. Trump administrations are in control of the levers of policy at key moments... 5. **Comment of the Day**: _[Charles Steindel](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/comment-of-the-day-_charles-steindelhttpswwwbradford-delongcom201901british-producehtmlcid6a00e551f0800388.html)_: "British produce comes in before the Swiss spaghetti harvest?... 6. _[Supply and Demand Shocks, and Seasonal Adjustment](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/supply-and-demand-shocks-and-seasonal-adjustment.html)_: Think that there are no such things as aggregate fluctuations generated by shifts in tastes and technologies? Think again. Look at the pattern of monthly payroll employment changes... ---- 1. A million dollars? As a tort settlement? What was going on?: **Michelle Boorstein**: _[C. John McCloskey: Opus Dei paid $977,000 to settle sexual misconduct claim against prominent Catholic pries](https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/01/08/opus-dei-paid-settle-sexual-misconduct-claim-against-prominent-catholic-priest/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.490d1ddd69b9)_ 2. That conservative parties' policies redistribute wealth and power upward... Continue reading

**Abbott Payson Usher** (1921): _[European Economic History](http://www.irwincollier.com/4112-2/)_: European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century. Half-course (second half-year). Tu., Th., Sat., at 9. Dr. Usher: >1. The Industrial Revolution: Usher, Industrial History, Chapters 1, 10, 12, 13, 14 >.. Agrarian Movement, Continent: Usher, Industrial History, pp. 112-20; Seeley, Life & Times of Stein, Rand [Benjamin Rand, Selections illustrating Economic History Since the Seven Years’ War. 5th ed. New York: Macmillan, 1911], pp. 86-98; Brentano, Agrarian Reform in Prussia – Econ. Jour. 1-20; Von Sybel, – in Rand, pp. 55-85 >3. Agrarian Movement, England: Usher, Industrial History, pp. 225-40; Curtler, Short History of English Agriculture, pp. 190-262 >4. Agricultural Depression: Prothero, R. E. (Baron Ernle) English Farming Past & Present, pp. 316-31, 346-418; Usher, Industrial History, pp. 240-47 >5. Free Trade Movement, England: Armitage-Smith, Free Trade & Its Results, 39-60, 130-163; Morley, Life of Cobden, chs. XV & XVI >6. Tariff History, Continent: Ashley, P. Modern Tariff History, (1910) 3-63, 359-372 >7. Recent Tariff History: U. S. Tariff Commission, Reciprocity & Commercial Treaties, 461-510 >8. Commerce & Shipping: Bowley, England’s Foreign Trade in the 19th Century, ed. 1905 pp. 55-96; Grosvenor, Gov’t Aid to Merchant Shipping, 45-61, 75-86, 135-65 >9. Transportation... Continue reading

Irwin Collier presents my Great-Great-Uncle Abbott's 1922 exam: **Abbott Payson Usher**: _[Final Exam Questions for: European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century, 1922](http://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-final-exam-questions-for-ushers-european-economic-history-1922/)_: * What problems were created by the Industrial Revolution? To what extent have they been solved? * Compare and give a critical estimate of the ways in which England and Denmark attempted to deal with the problems of the reform of land tenures, field systems, and rural organization? * What were the contributions of Sir Robert Peel and Richard Cobden: (a) to the repeal of the Corn Laws? (b) to the general establishment of the Free Trade policy? * What was meant about 1836 by the phrase “the railway is by nature a monopoly”? * What was the general policy of the English government on the issue of monopoly of railway facilities? How did this policy affect the development of the railway network in England? * Discuss the condition of the fundamental industries in England between 1870 and 1914. What are the prospects for the future! * What was the role played by the German banks in industrial combinations? * Comment or explain: chartism; the Newcastle coal vend; the Bradford Conditioning House; multiple tariff schedule; the... Continue reading

This book is fun!: **Jeff Erickson**: _[Algorithms](http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/book/Algorithms-JeffE.pdf)_: "'Algorithm' does not derive... from the Greek roots arithmos (αριθοσ), meaning “number”, and algos (αλγοσ), meaning 'pain'. Rather, it is a corruption of the name of the 9th century Persianm athematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Al-Khwarizmi is perhaps best known as the writer of the treatise _Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fihisab al-gabr wal-muqabala_, from which the modern word _algebra_ derives. In a different treatise, al-Khwarizmi described the modern decimal system for writing and manipulating numbers—in particular, the use of a small circle or _sifr_ to represent a missing quantity—which had been developed in India several centuries earlier. The methods described in Al-Kitab, using either written figures or counting stones, became known in English as _algorism_ or _augrym_, and its figures became known in English as _ciphers_... ---- #noted Continue reading

Equitable Growth Steering Committee member Karen Dynan and company point out a big problem. Should we be trying to pay down our debt now in order to create "fiscal space"? Our should we take secular stagnation seriously, and not fear the possibilty of a sudden downward valuation of government debt that would take fiscal space away?: **Karen Dynan, Jay Shambaugh, and Eduardo Porter**: _[What Tools Does the U.S. Have to Combat the Next Recession?](https://econofact.org/what-tools-does-the-u-s-have-to-combat-the-next-recession-video)_: "Today's lower equilibrium interest rates make it more likely that monetary policy would need to make use of unconventional tools to spur the economy. On the fiscal front, we have a much larger level of government debt relative to GDP than we did prior to the financial crisis. However, viewing this level of debt to GDP as a reason to restrain stimulus spending in case of a crisis could make the problem worse. Whether the government uses fiscal policy to stimulate the economy will depend more on political willingness, than on the actual limits on fiscal policy... ---- #shouldread #fiscalpolicy Continue reading

**David Rezza Baqaee and Emmanuel Farhi**: _[The Microeconomic Foundations of Aggregate Production Functions](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/farhi/files/microfoundations_production_functions.pdf)_: "We provide a general methodology for analyzing...aggregate production functions by deriving their first- and second-order properties... provide non-parametric characterizations of the macro elasticities of substitution between factors and of the macro bias of technical change in terms of micro sufficient statistics. They allow us to generalize existing aggregation theorems and to derive new ones. We relate our results to the famous Cambridge-Cambridge controversy... >...Despite winning the battle, the English side arguably lost the war. Although exposed as a fiction, the “neoclassical” approach to modeling the production technology of an economy was nevertheless very useful. It was adopted and built upon by the real business cycle and growth literatures starting in the 1980s. Reports of the death of the aggregate production function turned out to be greatly exaggerated, as nearly all workhorse macroeconomic models now postulate an exogenous aggregate production function. Why did Robinson and Sraffa fail to convince macroeconomists to abandon aggregate production functions? One answer is the old adage: you need a model to beat a model.... Although the post-Keynesians were effective in dismantling this concept, they were not able to offer a preferable alternative.... Sraffa['s]...... Continue reading

**Stephanie Victoria**: _["I'm a say this lil story then I'm gon' let'chall get back to tweeting...](https://twitter.com/CrownVictoria22/status/1084080729108160512)_: Recently, I discovered a grocery story even bougie-er than Whole Foods in my new 'hood. My addition to the list of 'approved negroes after 6PM' recently went through so my neighbors have stopped staring at me & the resident coons only give disapproving looks on trash day instead of their usual 'don't start no trouble' slave talks in the hallway... >...The store didn't even look like a grocery store but a boutique for food. But discovering this grocery store gem struck a nerve at Sundowntown HQ; my approval form didn't include this in the safe radius. The first time I went I experienced guffaws, a few elbow bumps, and stares. This time I was prepared and brought my tote bags, a tenet of membership. In true, "we got money & hate niggas fashion" the staff is all POC so, although a few are surly, most are helpful, peeped game and go out of their way to assist me and give me "extras" or special treatment. >Today, a young BM cashier opened his register for me and immediately an older WW gets in line behind... Continue reading

**Xavir Jaravel** (2017): _[Product innovations and inflation in the U.S. retail sector have magnified inequality](https://equitablegrowth.org/product-innovations-and-inflation-in-the-retail-sector-have-magnified-inequality/)_: "shifts in income distribution in the United States lead to product innovations that target high-income households, which increases purchasing-power inequality... >...Such product innovations have both a direct effect on purchasing power across income groups because they target specific groups, as well as an indirect effect through competition with products already in the marketplace. In short, wealthier households are more likely to spend on product categories where product innovations are more common and where competition is increasing, while low- and middle-income households are more likely to purchase products that face less competitive pricing pressures in the marketplace. For economic policymakers, this dynamic has important implications for the price indexation of government programs that provide support for low- and middle-income families... ---- #noted #equitablegrowth Continue reading

According to my Grandmother Florence Richardson Usher Lord, my Great-Great Uncle Abbott Payson Usher back in The Day used to teach—very boringly, she said—(1) Middle Ages, (2) Commercial Revolution, (3) Industrial Revolution, (4) Age of Modern Science, with growth accelerations in each of the four: **Dietz Vollrath**: _[Sustained growth and the increase in work hours](https://growthecon.com/blog/Leisure/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)_: "Jane Humphries and Jacob Weisdorf... labor contract terms in England over several centuries... annual labor contracts starting seeing sustained growth in their value around 1650 or so, far sooner than the day wages indicated... >...This pushes back the origin of economic growth to well before the actual technological IR, and this also matches the data on GDP per capita developed by Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton, and van Leeuwen in British Economic Growth, 1270-1870. One thing that I didn’t address... was whether the data on annual contracts (and on GDP per capita) indicate a rise in living standards.... What little evidence we do have on actual hours worked does seem to indicate that they increased a lot in the period around the actual Industrial Revolution.... We might assume that those workers on annual contracts, if they were part of the same labor market, would also have... Continue reading

Yet another Polanyiesque critique of the modern neoliberal order: **Wolfgang Münchau**: _[The Crisis of Modern Liberalism Is Down to Market Forces](https://www.ft.com/content/9dfea428-0538-11e9-9d01-cd4d49afbbe3)_: "Kartte was an old-fashioned German ordoliberal.... The macroeconomics of German ordoliberalism is somewhat dodgy. But they excelled at one particular thing. Their intellectual leaders explained better than anyone else how the German liberal order of the 1920s collapsed and how it drove a majority of the population away from supporting it. The short, flippant answer is that the Weimar Republic favoured the big guy... >...When the ordoliberals finally came to power in postwar Germany, they began by tilting the playing field in the other direction by creating a corporate and financial infrastructure to support small and medium-sized companies. Germany’s Mittelstand is both a reason for German robustness, but also for stagnation. And one of the main lessons of modern economic history is we cannot be oblivious to the distribution of income and wealth. This is not an argument about redistribution. This is about actively managing capitalism’s playing field to ensure that the majority of the population stays on it.... >What often leads the supporters and defenders of modern liberal democracy astray in their analysis is their addiction to macroeconomic... Continue reading

**Davie**: _["0, 179, 465, 654—what is the next number in this series? Stephen Moore claims it is obvious, and gestures at it with an 'and so on'"](https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/01/the-corporate-tax-cut-is-paying-for-itself-wsj.html?cid=6a00e551f080038834022ad3cbcc99200b#comment-6a00e551f080038834022ad3cbcc99200b)_: "Davie's master is also blocked by paywall, but given the quote about 'compounding', Davie would diffidently suggest that the mathematical error is more basic: The sequence should read 179, 365, 554. That is, from the second number in the sequence on, Mr. Moore accidentally added 100 to the total. Davie has seen his master make similar errors while not recognizing them, under the influence of Alzheimer's-type dementia. Davie would therefore gently suggest that Mr. Moore be checked for dementia... >...Davie would also wonder if Mr. Moore is comparing apples to oranges. It would seem credible that Mr. Moore did something like compare the total deficit projected by the Congressional Budget Office over the next 10 years under entirely different assumptions to the total increase in GDP he is projecting. It appears that the correct approach would be to take the projected decrease in government tax revenue directly caused by the tax cut in any given year compared to, say, 2017, times the government borrowing rate in one-year T-bond equivalents (now above 2 %)... Continue reading

**Delany Crampton**: _[Veterans in the U.S. Labor Market Face Barriers to Success That Can and Should Be Addressed](https://equitablegrowth.org/veterans-in-the-u-s-labor-market-face-barriers-to-success-that-can-and-should-be-addressed/)_: "Anna Zogas of the University of Washington observes in her 2017 research that the U.S. military does an extremely effective job of training veterans to operate within the military and an extremely poor job of preparing them, especially young servicemembers, for post-military job... ---- #noted Continue reading

The very sharp Jeet Heer traces David Brooks's intellectual panic back to the John Birch Society: **Jeet Heer**: _[A Few Thoughts on "Cultural Marxism," Marcuse, John Wayne, the John Birch Society, and Anti-Semitism](https://twitter.com/HeerJeet/status/895818587708899328)_: "Goobers in the Trump administration are worried about 'Cultural Marxism' in the 'Deep State' opposing Trump.... 'Cultural Marxism' is a big boogeyman on the alt-right: it's the people who are supposedly responsible for creating PC, feminism, etc. The actual historical 'cultural Marxists' (or 'Western Marxists') were the Frankfurt School: Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse etc... sought to supplant and update Marx's economic system with recognition of cultural forces... >...Frankfurt School marginalized for decades (at odds with both Stalinism of East & capitalism of West) but enjoyed 1960s resurgence. For a variety of reasons Marcuse was most popular Frankfurt School figure in New Left (live in CA, Angela Davis student, wrote about sex). By coincidence Marcuse was in France in 1968 and incorrectly portrayed by press as major instigator. The conspiracy-minded John Birch Society picked up on idea of Marcuse as evil masterminded & made it part of their lore. John Wayne was a Bircher and in Playboy interview of May 1971 repeats idea of Marcuse as root of all... Continue reading

Global North research university problem: **Speaker**: My major concern is: How can I be interested in fewer things?... ---- #acrossthewidemissouri #berkeley Continue reading

Welcome to the 21st-century, in which my coffee machine says that it is “booting”... ---- #acrossthewidemissouri #riseoftherobots Continue reading

**Marie Le Conte**: _["One of my favourite things about being alive in 2019](https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/1084814257437503488)_ is vaguely remembering that someone once sent you something you now need and having to look through the conversation archives of four different social media platforms to find it... ---- #noted Continue reading