Today is the day for obvious news stories. For example, did you know that Illinois is the second-flattest state in the mainland? And given that Alaska and Hawaii both have mountains and we only have the suburb of Mt. Prospect, I’ll bet we’re second flattest out of 50! You know why many people in the… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Political Discourse
Life in Chiberia
We sometimes forget how big a role the weather plays in the economy. Robert Gordon has argued that air conditioning has had a greater economic effect than the Internet; air conditioning made such major cities as Atlanta and Houston habitable during the summer, while the Internet just took away the margin of retail bookstores. GDP… [Read More]
Nominal prices, real prices, and the minimum wage
Recently, a friend asked me for an explanation of inflation. Her children were asking about the minimum wage, and they wanted to know why prices had to go up, and she was stumped. Here’s an explanation; you can decide if it is simple enough. First, economists talk about “real” prices and “real” wages, which would… [Read More]
Empowerment, banning bossy, and a feminist manifesto
Last week, there was a little online dustup over a for-profit company that wanted volunteer labor; professional writers do not like that. The company is in the business of providing educational materials to empower girls, so that led to some interesting conversations about what that means. Then, this week, Sheryl Sandberg and the Girl Scouts… [Read More]
On Gold, Guns, and Dried Food
People always ask me if they should buy gold. I always tell them it’s overvalued, but I’ve been saying that for years. Gold keeps going up in price for no good reason. That’s how bubbles are. It may be obvious that an asset (Beanie Babies, tech stocks, residential real estate) is overvalued, but the price… [Read More]
