Thursday, May 6, 2021
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ... Technology ...
Here’s another fashionable article about green energy. It appeared yesterday on the Bloomberg web site, in the “Green” section. Bloomberg.com, as you may know, is the corporate and media aspect of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s empire. It pretty much reflects Mr. Bloomberg’s world view, which is very pro-business and pro-wealth, but mixed with a tincture of liberal concern and even a bit of corporate “wokiness” of late. So of course there is a “Green” division of Bloomberg Media, which reports on climate change and how business is adapting to modern environmental concerns. And why not, given that there is money to be made by somebody!
Given all of that, I wasn’t too surprised to learn from the title of this article that “Replacing Coal Plants With Renewables Is Cheaper 80% of the Time”. And as if that wasn’t enough, the subtitle goes on to tell us “A new report shows that the economics may not even support running U.S. coal plants, let alone building them.” Wow, sounds like the revolution is under way! If the economics now line up so powerfully in favor of green energy, then who needs AOC (Congresswoman Andrea Ocassio-Cortez) and Bernie (Vermont Senator) and their “Green New Deal”? It’s all over but the shouting (and maybe a few billion dollars of financing deals and construction projects) . . .
In a nutshell, this article reports on the results of a recent report from a non-partisan climate and energy research group called Energy Innovation. The first few paragraphs of the article make it sound like the end is nigh for fossil fuels. » continue reading …
Friday, June 26, 2020
Economics/Business ... Politics ... Society ...
In recent times, we have heard a lot about systemic racism. Since the horrible George Floyd killing by the police in Minneapolis, we have heard a lot more about it. What is systemic racism? To be honest, from what I’ve read about it (which has been a lot lately), I’m not completely sure. Those who use the term seem to be saying that racism is widespread in American society. The days of Jim Crow and back seats on the town bus are long gone, thank goodness. But there remains something about our “systems” that continue to manifest anti-black acts and attitudes; that is what I take away from the notion of systemic racism. And I am not writing this to deny the concept’s validity. But it does raise questions and problems in pinning it down precisely.
So, next question — exactly what is it about our systems that manifest racism? The easiest answers to this question come from the criminal justice system, especially from the police enforcement component. The George Floyd killing was perhaps the most egregious recent example of an African American being treated in a racist fashion by police, but Floyd’s death follows in a series of incidents where blacks stopped by the police wind up dead or seriously wounded because of police misconduct. The evolution of widespread video recording capacity in the late 1990s was the technology that “uncovered the rock” to see the ugly stuff that was previously shielded from most citizens.
Yes, there is no denying that many police departments have a problem in controlling racist attitudes and unprofessional behavior on the part of their officers, and that inadequate progress has been made in addressing this problem over the past 2 decades.
OK, so we can watch the videos and see systemic racism occurring in the nation’s policing system. But the term ‘systemic racism’ as used today appears to be addressing much more » continue reading …
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Economics/Business ... Society ... Technology ...
I sometimes expend some mental energy pondering where America seems to be going, from the perspective of a social and economic historian. (OK, I’m not a professional social and economic historian, but I find it interesting and I have previously shared some thoughts on this blog about that). Yes, I know that sounds awfully boring. But it does relate to how people will be living their lives in the future. It also helps us to see some things that are already happening to ourselves.
So, a recent article on the American Affairs Journal website (yes, sounds very boring) caught my eye. The article is entitled “America’s Drift toward Feudalism”, and was written by Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in California. So what the heck does it mean to “drift toward feudalism”?
Well, feudalism was a social and economic system that dominated Europe during much of the Middle Ages. In feudal Europe, the economy was basically agrarian, land was the most important asset, and the great majority of the land was owned by a small handful of rich people, sometimes known as the lords or barons. A fair amount of land was also owned by churches and monasteries in the Catholic fold. The great majority of the population was quite poor (the “peasant class”) and didn’t own any land, nor anything much else. They tried to stay alive (barely) by farming the land for the rich owners. » continue reading …
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ... Technology ...
We hear that many in the Democratic Party today are warming up to the idea of socialism; and that many young adults now favor socialism over capitalism.
One of the strongest criticisms of socialism, in academic terms anyway, came from the 20th Century philosopher and economist Fredrich Hayek. In a nutshell, Hayek said that the problem with socialism, relative to free market capitalism, regards information. According to Hayek, free markets make good and efficient use of economic information, automatically – no one oversees the information flow, but it works out in a very good way. Whereby, in a socialistic economy controlled by a centralized government, human intervention gets in the way of information flow, and makes the overall economy very inefficient.
A New York Times article put it this way —
[Hayek] argued that most of the knowledge in a modern economy was local in nature, and hence unavailable to central planners. The brilliance of a market economy was that it allocated resources through the decentralized decisions of a myriad of buyers and sellers who interacted on the basis of their own particular knowledge. The market was a form of “spontaneous order,” which was far superior to planned societies based on the hubris of Cartesian rationalism.
A web site dedicated to this “knowledge problem” includes this summary of Hayek: » continue reading …
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Art & Entertainment ... Economics/Business ... Society ...
Today is the big day for American politics, the Presidential Election. There will be thousands if not millions of articles written over the next 48 hours about it. I will probably chip in my 2 cents at some point. But for now, in the early afternoon calm before the evening storm when the results start coming in, I’m going to zoom back a week or two and think about the World Series.
As you probably know, the 2016 World Series was quite dramatic, pitting two Cinderella teams that haven’t won a World Series for a long time; since 1948 for the American League Cleveland Indians, and since 1908 for the National League Chicago Cubs. Cleveland jumped off to a 3 win / 1 loss start, and it looked like the Series could finish up in game 5, surely by game 6. But no, the Cubs clawed their way back to an exciting extra-inning win in game 7.
After the fourth game, my friend Mary wrote to me with her theory that the Cubs would come back and the Series would go thru to a game 7. This no doubt reflected her faith in the Cubs, given that Mary is a life-long Chicago-lander. But Mary also thought that the financial powers behind Big Baseball would encourage teams to play as many World Series games as possible, to avoid 4 or 5 game routs so as to maximize the profits from tickets, media revenues, and memorabilia sales. Well, obviously her forecast that the Cubs would force a 7th game was on the money. But what about the overall theory that the World Series games are rigged » continue reading …
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Economics/Business ... Politics ...
The theme of the September 2016 issue of Scientific American was “The Future”. That is not an unusual theme for a science magazine. Over the past few decades, however, SciAm has become more and more “socially conscious”, for better and for worse. Science certainly does have to answer to society, and what society values will influence science (although by the same token, science needs and has traditionally maintained some independence and shelter from the whims of politics and business; science is supposed to be about truth, whereas politics and business so often aren’t!).
Therefore it was not all that unusual to see an article in the “future” issue written by a Princeton economics professor. This article was titled “The Threat of Inequality“, and it discussed the potential social and political consequences of the economic trend over the past few decades (but especially since the 2008 financial crash) of declining economic growth and growing income inequality. The name of the author is Sir Angus Deaton. Whoa, now there’s a name that reeks of authority! Well, in my book, anyway. But let’s see what Professor Deaton has to say.
Sir Deaton starts by reminding us how much economic progress the world has made since the 18th century. “We are enormously wealthier and healthier now than at any time in human history”. Over this time, Prof. Deaton admits that the world has not shared uniformly in this progress. “Per capita incomes in the US are 4 times higher than China, 10 times higher than in India or Nigeria, nearly 20 times higher » continue reading …
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Economics/Business ... History ... Public Policy ... Society ...
In my last post, I discussed the notion of a “political economy” and reviewed some very insightful thoughts by political journalist John Judis, which seek to explain the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in economic terms. In a nutshell, Judis feels that both Sanders and Trump represent different points on the same underlying wave of populist dissatisfaction with our nation’s current political economy. Just what is this “economy” that so many people are dissatisfied with? It’s a high-tech version of what we called “Reaganomics” back when it was introduced in the early 1980s, with various modifications and adjustments made during the presidency of Bill Clinton. As such, I call it the “Reagan-Clinton1” political economy, although Judis gives it the more academically acceptable tag of “market liberalism” (not to be confused with political liberalism, which largely detests Reaganomics).
Many other pundits have explained the rise of Trump in terms of racism, perhaps a backlash against the ascent of Barack Obama. They admit that many of Trump’s largely white supporters have experienced tough economic times, but contend that the motivations behind Trump’s ascendancy largely reflect the fact that minorities have gained power, and that whites are increasingly anxious about this. Certain pundits, however, (e.g. David Roberts and Derek Thompson) also contend that this racial resentment has an economic component, a racial selfishness reflecting the belief that whites are no longer automatically first in line when it comes to reaping the benefits of the system.
My question is whether the political responses to Reaganomics from the black community and its leaders have in any way fed into the white racial anxieties that Trump seems to have drawn much of his support from.
Ironically, a look at some income statistics spanning the past 40 years indicates that in the aggregate, whites » continue reading …
Friday, September 23, 2016
Economics/Business ... Politics ...
Have you heard anything lately or read much about “political economics”? If you attended college, you may have taken a Political Economy course, or you might have heard the term used in a high school civics class. But then you got out into the real world, and you almost never hear these two words used together. You heard a LOT about politics, and almost as much about the economy. But political economy?
Nevertheless, politics and the economy have a whole lot to do with one another. In reality, they are just about tied at the hip. President Clinton the First realized this and had a saying about it . . . remember “it’s the economy, stupid”? (This somewhat irritating motto was coined in 1992 by Clinton campaign strategist James Carville). So, what can we take from the “political economy” viewpoint to help understand what’s going on today on the political scene? The biggest happening over the past two years has obviously been Donald Trump. But following not too far behind in black swan-dom was Bernie Sanders. Can we relate Trump and Bernie to what’s going on in the American economy today?
A senior and very well respected American political journalist named John Judis recently published a good article that did just that. The article is called “All the Rage“, and is available on the New Republic web site. It’s a long read, but worth every word. There have been a whole stack of articles over the past few months attempting to explain why Trump and Sanders came out of nowhere and surprised everyone on the political scene. For now, we’re through with Bernie Sanders, but the Trump drama obviously continues to » continue reading …
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ... Politics ...
America today seems to have a race relations problem; that’s not saying anything new. A lot of people today perceive a worsening in such relations over the past decade.
Perhaps a key factor is the information revolution that has been caused by the widespread availability of video recording to the public, which stems from the rise of smart phones. These phones have been increasingly used over the past 4 or 5 years to video police interactions with the public, especially when there is police misconduct. These recordings have uncovered a great deal of disrespect or improper acts by the police when dealing with African-Americans in a wide variety of contexts, from simple traffic stops to pursuing criminal suspects. Too often, these potentially improper police acts turn out to be fatal. In some of the more “viral” examples of these recent video cases, the police actions eventually turn out to be justified; there was a clear and present danger to the police and public. These videos often do not tell the whole story. But too often, it becomes apparent that the police were in the wrong, and that underlying racial attitudes on the part of police officers and officials may have been involved.
And thus the rise over the past few years of the Black Lives Matter movement. BLM appears to have been spawned by these highly publicized incidents. However, BLM is increasingly trying to transcend the troublesome matter of » continue reading …
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...
Oil prices are currently hitting historic lows; hard to believe that they were above $100 per barrel not so long ago. Now they are struggling to stay at $30. As late as December, 2011, I said in one of my posts that “unfortunately, oil production doesn’t seem to be growing at all anymore”, and I anticipated that oil prices would remain high. I now need to eat my words.
So what’s going on? Oil production definitely has gotten a boost from new technologies that because usable over the past few years, e.g. fracking and super-deep sea drilling. On the demand side, most analysts cite the economic problems in China, i.e. its serious contraction of growth over the past 3 or 4 years. At the same time, the rest of the world in general isn’t doing so well either; world economic growth is expected to remain less than 3% per year. And then add in all of the energy conservation and alternative energy efforts that were started back when oil was above $100 per barrel. Overall world demand for oil is still rising, but not as fast as before, and less than many people had anticipated.
The classic economics 101 explanation for the oil situation is that there is an oversupply in the market, which has allowed oil users to bid down their purchase price. Under that textbook scenario, the producers will soon stop producing and offering so much oil to users, and the users will then have to start bidding more to get what they need. I.e., prices will rise once again, back to the lowest marginal cost of producing a new barrel of oil under present conditions (which is certainly above $30 at current usage levels, although that cost is much lower than it once was due to technology innovations such as fracking).
That’s the theory. But what appears to really be happening is » continue reading …