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Michael W. Kruse

Kansas City, MO

Socio-economist and economic development nerd.

Interests: history, digital photography, writing, technology, soccer, baseball, emerging culture, road trips, economic issues, urban hiking

Recent Activity

Billionaires do NOT pay an overall tax rate lower than the bottom 50%.

Two months ago, the New York Times uncritically ran an article claiming billionaires pay lower tax rates than the bottom half of American earners. (I see this and related pieces circulated by my progressive friends.) The unsubstantiated and yet to... Continue reading

Posted Dec 10, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We're All Dead - Book Review

The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy: We're All Dead (Quotes are from the e-book version.) Is economics value-free? Can it be? Economics emerged alongside other social sciences in the nineteenth century, aspiring to apply the scientific method to the... Continue reading

Posted Nov 6, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Maternal Mortality Rates Are 27 Times Higher Globally Than In Europe. Why That Is A Good Thing

The chart below is based on maternal mortality rates, the number of women per 100,000 who die from pregnancy-related causes in a year. The first bar shows how many women die each year while the second bar shows how many... Continue reading

Posted Oct 16, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Why Population Control Is Not The Answer to Climate Change

Population control is sometimes championed as a way to fight climate change. Bernie Sanders recently raised this idea. The world population is growing. There are 7.7 billion people today. There will be nearly 11 billion in 2100, according to United... Continue reading

Posted Oct 1, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Global Childhood Deaths In Steep Decline

Worldwide, there were 12.6 million deaths for children under five years old in 1990. As of 2017, there were 5.4 million. Keep in mind that the world population grew by 50% during this time. Had death rates continued at the... Continue reading

Posted Aug 9, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Our ancestors did not live in balance with nature. They died in balance with it.

One of most important observations (among many) from the late Hans Roslings’ Factfulness: When a population is not growing over a long period of time, and the population curve is flat, this must mean that each generation of new parents... Continue reading

Posted Aug 1, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Why I Have Never Met a Neoliberal

I recently rediscovered this excellent blog post I read last year, The problem with “critical” studies. Joseph Heath's observations about the term neoliberal are spot on. This explains why I have ever met one, and likely neither have you. "For... Continue reading

Posted May 2, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Socialism Is A Freighted Word According To David Bentley Hart. So Why Is He Defending It?

Theologian David Bentley Hart just wrote an op ed Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’. The byline says “Only in America is the word freighted with so much perceived menace.” As he frames it, socialism is simply about creating a... Continue reading

Posted Apr 29, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Extreme Poverty is Vanishing. What Does That Mean in Practical Terms?

Throughout human history, 90% of people have lived at a subsistence level - at or under what economists today call the extreme poverty line. Between 1820 and 1980, that percentage shrank by half to 44%. Between 1980 and 2005, it... Continue reading

Posted Mar 12, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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European (Scandinavian) Capitalism is not Democratic Socialism (But is that what matters?)

Mall of Scandinavia. Wikimedia: Arild Vågen I continue to reflect on the hype in the U.S. about "democratic socialism." I think most people who use the term are saying they want a market economy with a greater emphasis on social... Continue reading

Posted Feb 20, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Five Hidden Ways That Globalization is Changing

Interesting infographic from McKinsey Global Institute. For details read Globalization in transition: The future of trade and value chains. Continue reading

Posted Jan 21, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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Democratic Socialism IS Socialism

This article, Here's the difference between a 'socialist' and a 'Democratic socialist' has been circulating as an explainer as to why “democratic socialism” is different from socialism. Democratic socialists merely believe a range of services – like health care and... Continue reading

Posted Jan 8, 2019 at Kruse Kronicle

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World Social Indicators: Global Per Capita Income

We have seen that life expectancy has been improving all across the planet. It is one of the most important measures of well-being. Yet most people think of income when they think of prosperity. Rightly so. Income is correlated with... Continue reading

Posted Nov 21, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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World Social Indicators: Child Mortality

Alongside life expectancy, a second measure of prosperity demographers frequently use is the child mortality rate. The child mortality rate is the number of children that die between birth and their fifth birthday, per 1,000 live births. Because the first... Continue reading

Posted Oct 26, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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World Social Indicators: Life Expectancy

Demographers commonly use life expectancy rates as a measure of societal well-being. Life expectancy is the number of years someone is expected to live at the time they are born based on actuarial science. Long life is a universal indicator... Continue reading

Posted Oct 23, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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World Social Indicators: Introduction

Is the state of world getting better or getting worse? How would you answer that question? What indicators would you use? For Christians, our mission is to seek the greatest shalom possible in the world, always cognizant that shalom in... Continue reading

Posted Oct 19, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Carpe Datum! Paragraphs from "Galileo's Middle Finger"

Alice Dreger's "Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science," is one of the most refreshing books I have read recently. Dreger is a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School... Continue reading

Posted Apr 18, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Were Slaves Immigrants?

Were Slaves Immigrants? Yes. If that answer troubles you, please hear me out. Ben Carson touched off a firestorm this week when he referred to slaves as immigrants. (Barak Obama has done the same several times.) The uproar has been... Continue reading

Posted Mar 9, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Recycle Or Not? The Need To Test Good Intentions

This article from October 2015, asks, Are We Recycling Too Much? Our study made the first known attempt to combine these various costs and benefits into one analysis to estimate what recycling rate is best. Our conclusion was that recycling... Continue reading

Posted Mar 1, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Number of Job "Wanters" is About 14 Million (Not The President's 94 Million)

Last night, the president said there are 94 million people "out of the labor force" needing a job. No. The number of people wanting a job is about 14 million people. Let us do the math: US Population = 330... Continue reading

Posted Mar 1, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Runaway World - It Is Here

The following quote comes from Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. It was written in 1998, by British sociologist, Anthony Giddens. What Globalisation is, and whether it is in any way new, are the focus of intense debate.... Continue reading

Posted Jan 25, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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"Is Fair Trade Fair?" - Primer on Free Trade Coffee

What are the economic merits of Free Trade Coffee? In this video, my friend Victor Claar (professor of economics at Henderson State University) gives a 25 minute presentation about the economics of fair trade. It was originally given at the... Continue reading

Posted Jan 20, 2017 at Kruse Kronicle

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Don't Forget the Good Stuff

It is easy to become obsessed with challenges and threats we see before us today. It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and to see the tremendous good that is happening in the world. Here are six... Continue reading

Posted Dec 23, 2016 at Kruse Kronicle

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Shrinking the World, 1800-1930

Satirist and humorist Douglas Adams, probably best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, once wrote: "Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the... Continue reading

Posted Dec 14, 2016 at Kruse Kronicle

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The Future of the American Dream

For most Americans living today, there has been a presumption that our children's lives will be more prosperous than own. The American Dream, whatever particularities might include, has always included this assumption. It is virtually a social contract. Is the... Continue reading

Posted Dec 12, 2016 at Kruse Kronicle

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