Cost-of-living increases for Social Security had become so routine over the past several decades that it set off outrage when news spread that for the second year in a row, there would be no increase in January. On Thursday, Speaker…
Category: Other
Why such surprise about the corn crop?
Grain prices, especially for corn, spiked by some 20 percent in recent days. University of Chicago finance professor Eugene Fama’s theory of efficient markets helps provides a starting point for examining just why this spike took place. And more basic…
A snappy jobs sound bite is off the mark
Former Congressman Newt Gingrich asserted in Minneapolis this week that, since Ronald Reagan, the Republicans have been ‘the party of paychecks’ and the Democrats ‘the party of food stamps.’ It was a snappy sound bite, but the assertion that job…
Laws of supply and demand affects pensions, too
With all the calls for cutting government spending, much attention is being focused on how much government employees are being paid and on promises that have been made about pensions and retiree health care. This is relevant for me because…
Economic times have changed since JFK
What would JFK do? Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, recently touched off a ruckus by using a 1963 speech by John F. Kennedy in a campaign ad. In the clip, JFK argues that lowering tax…
Will smaller government hold water?
Many in our country are calling for smaller government and lower taxes. ‘Tea party’ activists call for abolition of programs that are not clearly within the functions specified by the U.S. Constitution. But several recent news items, all water-related, raise…
Consumers will pay for bank, airline monopolies
Increasing monopoly power can get you coming and going, especially at the airport. The decreased competition in air travel resulting from successive mergers among airlines has already increased air fares. Now a pending take-over of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group by…
New apple raises land-grant fairness questions anew
The dispute over the commercialization of SweeTango, a new apple developed at the University of Minnesota, is not just a brouhaha in a bushel basket. It has important implications for the way we pay for and perform research and disseminate…
Beware of partisans skewing stats
Barely 20 months after his inauguration, Barack Obama is said to ‘own’ the ongoing recession just as George W. Bush was blamed for a stock market swoon almost as soon as he was inaugurated. Assigning responsibility for a bad economy…
When “trickle-down” rolls downhill
Whether states should transfer money on down to local governments is a debatable question. The aim of such transfers is to make our society more equitable, not necessarily more efficient. But if citizens have decided that state revenue transfers to…