My teaching session on national income accounting always yields the same question: “How can anyone live on $400 a year?” In the United States, per capita income was $29,676 in 1999, while in Bangladesh it was under $380. Anyone in…
Author: Ed Lotterman
Farm subsidies a regressive reality
“It’s like putting your kid on a diet and telling him that he absolutely can’t eat more than one pound of sugar a day.” That’s how one USDA official in Minnesota characterized the $275,000 limit on annual subsidy payments to…
Real costs of programs must be weighed against benefits
The Legislature is in session and, with the state facing a budget shortfall, virtually every state program is on the table even though even-year legislatures traditionally deal only with bonding for capital projects. Chances are good that three programs of…
End of recession hard to pin down
In an exchange of ideas with my editor the other day, he asked simply: How and when will we know that the recession is over? That’s a good question, particularly in a recession so mild there are not many visible…
Calculate “opportunity cost” when figuring true loss
People have been getting ripped off lately. Thousands of Enron employees reportedly have lost money on the Enron stock they held in their 401(k) plans or personally. Millions of Argentines who scrimped to build up dollar-denominated bank accounts now can’t…
Sorting out government aid to business
How far a government should go to provide economic support to a private business–whether it’s moving, closing, shrinking or growing—seems to be a never-ending question in Minnesota. Proponents of subsidies, tax breaks and creative financing plans present convincing arguments that…
Time for the Fed to ease up on the money accelerator
“A hundred million here, a hundred million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.” That reputedly was Senator Everett Dirksen’s sardonic explanation of how minor pork barrel appropriations for special interests could affect the federal budget. The great…
Political rhetoric needs balance
Big oil companies are announcing their earnings for the fourth quarter of 2001, and the news is generally negative. Exxon-Mobil, Sunoco, Amerada-Hess, Kerr-McGee and others all reported losses or sharply lower earnings compared to preceding quarters. These companies are big…
Look to Washington for macroeconomics lesson
The few thousand of us who teach introductory economics in this nation should express our gratitude to President Bush, Senators Daschle and Lott and Representatives Hastert and Gephardt. Why? Because the president and Congress are simplifying teaching macroeconomics. Teaching introductory…
State’s 4% jobless rate isn’t that bad
Among this week’s big news was the announcement of unemployment rate for December for Minnesota. Virtually every media outlet heralded the fact that the state’s unemployment rate rose to 4 percent, the highest in five years. At the risk of…