J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 61

Plutarch: Life of Cleomenes III http://penelope.uchicago....

Plutarch: Life of Cleomenes III http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cleomenes*.html: His lack of��resources forced him to stake the whole issue on a battle where, as Polybius says, he could oppose only twenty thousand men to thirty thousand. He showed himself an admirable general in the hour of peril, his fellow countrymen gave him spirited support, and even his mercenaries fought in a praiseworthy manner, but he was overwhelmed by the superior character of his enemies' armour and the weight of their heavy-armed phalanx. Phylarchus, however, says that there was treachery also.... Damoteles (who had previously been bribed, as we are told, by Antigonus) told him to have no concern about flanks and rear, for all was well there, but to give his attention to those who assailed him in front.... So Cleomenes... drove back the phalanx of the Macedonians for about five furlongs,��and followed after them victoriously.... After Eucleidas and his forces had in this way been cut to pieces, and the enemy, after their victory there, were coming on against the other wing, Cleomenes, seeing that his soldiers were in disorder and no longer had courage to stand their ground, took measures for his own safety. Many of his mercenaries fell, as we are told, and all the Spartans, six thousand in number, except two hundred. When Cleomenes came to the city, he advised the citizens who met him to receive Antigonus; as for himself, he said he would do whatever promised to be best for Sparta, whether it called for his life or death.... Cleomenes... after coming into the presence of Ptolemy, at first he met with only ordinary and moderate kindness from him; but when he had given proof of his sentiments and shown himself to be a man of good sense, and when, in his daily intercourse, his Laconian simplicity retained the charm which a free spirit imparts, while he in no wise brought shame upon his noble birth or suffered the blows of Fortune to bow him down, but showed himself more winning than those whose conversation sought only to please and flatter, then Ptolemy was filled with great respect for him, and deeply repented that he had neglected such a man and abandoned him to Antigonus, who had thereby won great glory and power...

#noted #2020-03-07

Remembering that the Obama Administration was part of the...

Remembering that the Obama Administration was part of the solution to our economic problems only 60% of the time, and part of the problem 40% of the time. The deficit was not America's economic problem #1, OR EVEN #10!!!!!!, on November 29, 2010: Jack Lew: Tightening Our Belts https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/11/29/tightening-our-belts: 'NOVEMBER 29, 2010: he fiscal and economic situation we face today is very different than the projected surpluses we left behind the last time I served as OMB Director in the 1990's.... To lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and to make our nation competitive for years to come, we must put the United States back on a sustainable fiscal course. And that���s going to require some tough choices. Today, the President made one of those: proposing a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers. This will save�� $2 billion over the remainder of this fiscal year, $28 billion in cumulative savings over the next five years, and more than $60 billion over the next 10 years.... Make no mistake: this decision was not made lightly. Like everyone honored to serve in the White House or the Cabinet, we work with extraordinarily talented public servants every day.... This pay freeze is not a reflection on their fine work. It is a reflection of the fiscal reality that we face...

#noted #2020-03-07

People are telling lots of untruths about vertical merger...

People are telling lots of untruths about vertical mergers and antitrust. Fiona Scott Morton is on the case: Fiona Scott Morton: There are many false assertions lurking in the comments on the agency draft VMGs https://twitter.com/ProfFionasm/status/1235601064314826752. Here is one: "Despite the fact that, among law and economics scholars, it has long been an essentially settled matter that vertical integration���whether partial integration by contract or full integration by merger���is typically procompetitive (or, at the very least, competitively ambiguous, and problematic in only very limited, stylized, and theoretical circumstances)... THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THEORY OR EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. So what does the footnote say? It cites a speech asserting the same wrong thing, (See, e.g., D. Bruce Hoffman, Acting Director, Fed. Trade Comm���n, Remarks at the Credit Suisse 2018 Washington Perspectives Conference:). This person, in turn, cites a survey of papers that do NOT support the claim https://t.co/sTDwaeDv0s?amp=1...

#noted #2020-03-06

Young whippersnapper Carmen Sanchez Cumming joins Equitab...

Young whippersnapper Carmen Sanchez Cumming joins Equitable Growth: Carmen Sanchez Cumming: What the Historically Low U.S. Unemployment Rate Means for Women Workers https://equitablegrowth.org/what-the-historically-low-u-s-unemployment-rate-means-for-women-workers/: 'Last month���s Jobs Report showed that at 3.5 percent, the share of women who are actively looking for a job but don���t have one continues to be near a 65-year low. At 3.6 percent, men���s unemployment rate is currently slightly above the rate for women. Prior to 1983, that was rarely the case. Research published in 2017 by economists Stefania Albanesi of the University of Pittsburgh and Ay��eg��l ��ahin (at the time with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now at the University of Texas at Austin) shows that for most of the post-World War II period and until the early 1980s, women���s unemployment rate was rarely below 5 percent and usually more than 1.5 percentage points above that of their male counterparts. In the ensuing four decades, however, the gender unemployment gap���the difference between the female and male unemployment rates���nearly disappeared except during recessions, when men consistently experience a higher joblessness rate...

#noted #2020-03-06

This looks to be a major advance in our ability to track ...

This looks to be a major advance in our ability to track in near real time the regional evolution of the U.S. economy. If I had seen this pattern of regional growth and decline a decade ago, it would have made me less worried about the gerrymandering that the Constituion has built into the Senate. The people in declining areas are relatively poor, and they have little economcic or cultural power, so giving them more political power might have created a fairer overall balance. Yet somehow it does not seem to have worked out that way: their senators are not fighting for a fairer division of wealth, but seem focused on achieving negative sum goals for the country at large���if we can't be prosperous, you shouldn't be prosperous either. Raksha Kopparam: County-Level GDP Gives Insight into Local-Level U.S. Economic Growth https://equitablegrowth.org/new-measu... 'The U.S. Department of Commerce���s Bureau of Economic Analysis released a new measure.... Local Area Gross Domestic Product. LAGDP is an estimate of GDP at the county level between the years of 2001���2018.... Growth since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009... is concentrated in the West Coast states and parts of the Midwest. States such as Nevada, West Virginia, New Mexico, and Wyoming have seen a significant number of counties contract in economic output since the recession. One of the benefits of this new LAGDP measure is that it provides an industry-specific breakdown.... Trends in the manufacturing industry and how manufacturing has contributed to GDP pre- and post-Great Recession are also now more trackable.... Manufacturing... [in] clusters of counties on the East Coast and the Midwest suffered contractions. Although overall manufacturing output in North Carolina increased, many counties experienced heavy declines over the past 17 years.... 20 percent of the nation���s economic growth is concentrated in 11 counties, including the cities of Los Angeles, New York, and Harris, Texas...

#noted #2020-03-06

The Federal Reserve appears to be not just the first but ...

The Federal Reserve appears to be not just the first but the only instrumentality of the federal government to actually do something significant in response to the coronovirus. Since this is overwhelmingly not a monetary policy but a public health problem, this is really, really, really, really not how things should be: Claudia Sahm: U.S. Economic Policymakers Need To Fight The Coronavirus Now https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-economic-policymakers-need-to-fight-the-coronavirus-now/: 'The Fed['s]... policy tools... are too blunt to help the people who need it most. People in our country are getting sick, and the most vulnerable workers could lose their jobs if they are too ill to show up. Monetary policy cannot address this gaping public health problem. Yes, the Fed might calm financial markets some. Yes, the Fed might help businesses and borrowers who are taking on debt. The Fed is doing its part, doing what it can. But it needs help. Chair Powell made that clear before the cameras, saying: "The virus outbreak is something that will require a multifaceted response. And that response will come in the first instance from healthcare professionals and health policy experts. It will also come from fiscal authorities, should they determine that a response is appropriate. It will come from many other public- and private-sector actors, businesses, schools, state and local governments.... This morning���s G-7 statement... reflect[s] coordination at a high level in a form of a commitment to use all available tools..." What can the federal government do? Here is my proposal, grounded in more than a decade of research and forecasting at the Fed. Act fast. It is time for the federal government���all parts of it���to move swiftly against the spread of the coronavirus and any economic distress it may cause.... Provide financial support to people who are suffering.... Plan for the worst.... Have automatic support ready for a recession...

#noted #2020-03-06

The best thing I read last month: John Quiggin: Climate C...

The best thing I read last month: John Quiggin: Climate Change and the Strange Death of Libertarianism http://crookedtimber.org/2020/01/18/climate-change-and-the-strange-death-of-libertarianism/: 'It wasn���t that long ago that everyone was talking about the ���libertarian moment��� in the US. Now, libertarianism/propertarianism is pretty much dead. The support base, advocacy groups and so on have gone full Trumpists, while the intellectual energy has shifted to ���liberaltarianism��� or, a more recent variant, Tyler Cowen���s conversion to ���state capacity libertarianism���. Most of those departing to the left have mentioned the failure of libertarianism to handle climate change. It was critical for two reasons. First, any serious propertarian response would have required support ofr the creation of new property rights (emissions permits) and the restriction of existing ones (burning carbon). That would imply an acknowledgement that property rights are not natural relations between people (owners) and things (property). They are socially constructed relationships between people, allowing some people to use things and to stop other people from doing so. Second, the effort to deny the necessary implications of climate change inevitably resulted in denial of the scientific evidence that climate change was occurring. That contributed to a situation where most former libertarians are now Trumpists, happy to deny the evidence of their own eyes if that���s what the leader requires of them...

#noted #2020-03-09

Frederick H. Schultz - Wikipedia

Wikipedia: Frederick H. Schultz
Wikipedia: Welfare queen
Author: Weekend Reading: George Stigler in 1962 on "The Problem of the Negro"
Wikipedia: G. William Miller

One of the key moments of mid-nineteenth century French p...

One of the key moments of mid-nineteenth century French politics. The moment where those who have a little���whose grandparents had gained property to their small farms in the Great French Revolution���become convinced that they have more to lose than to gain from further reform: that sinister lazy urban socialist moochers rather than plutocrats and aristocrats are the threats to their status and prosperity: Alexis de Tocqueville: The Recollections https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/tocqueville-the-recollections-of-alexis-de-tocqueville-1896: 'In the country all the landed proprietors, whatever their origin, antecedents, education or means, had come together, and seemed to form but one class: all former political hatred and rivalry of caste or fortune had disappeared from view. There was no more jealousy or pride displayed between the peasant and the squire, the nobleman and the commoner; instead, I found mutual confidence, reciprocal friendliness, and regard. Property had become, with all those who owned it, a sort of badge of fraternity. The wealthy were the elder, the less endowed the younger brothers; but all considered themselves members of one family, having the same interest in defending the common inheritance. As the French Revolution had infinitely increased the number of land-owners, the whole population seemed to belong to that vast family. I had never seen anything like it, nor had anyone in France within the memory of man...

#noted #2020-03-05

Claudia Goldin: The Role of World War II in the Rise of W...

Claudia Goldin: The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Work https://www.nber.org/papers/w3203: 'The 1940's were a turning point in married women's labor force participation, leading many to credit World War II with spurring economic and social change. This paper uses information from two retrospective surveys, one in 1944 and another in 1951, to resolve the role of World War II in the rise of women's paid work. More than 50% of all married women working in 1950 had been employed in 1940, and more than half of the decade's new entrants joined the labor force after the war. Of those women who entered the labor force during the war, almost half exited before 1950. Employment during World War II did not enhance a woman's earnings in 1950 in a manner consistent with most hypotheses about the war. Considerable persistence in the labor force and in occupations during the turbulent 1940's is displayed for women working in 1950, similar to findings for the periods both before and after. World War Il had several significant indirect impacts on women's employment, but its direct influence appears considerably more modest...

#noted #2020-03-05