Punk Economics: Episode 3

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Red State Economics

Public-sector job losses don’t count. Except when they do. One way to dramatize just how severe our de facto austerity has been is to compare government employment and spending during the Obama-era economic expansion, which began in June 2009, with their tracks during the Reagan-era expansion, which began in November…

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Brain Melting Economics

Try wrapping your brain around this bit of MMT. Now this may shock you, because nearly everyone believes a dollar bill is a dollar. But it isn’t. It’s just evidence you own a dollar. A dollar bill is a title to a dollar. If you own a house, the evidence you own it…

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Chopstick Capitalism

Why is Communist China better at capitalism than we are?

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Flammable Markets

Or perhaps inflammable markets… I can never remember.  But I have a question: Why do Americans think they have a Constitutional Right to cheap gasoline?  

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The Defects of the Gold Standard and the Ignorance of Ron Paul

This is the best, simplest explanation of the reasons the gold standard is so profoundly broken.  Are you listening, Ron Paul? In short, there is a really serious problem inherent in any banking system in which the standard is itself a medium of exchange. The very fact that gold is…

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Economics Unwound

In an effort to explain how he became a troll, economist John Emerson explains that the way economics deals with price and not value has created our current circumstance.  Price is an objective measure (“this candy bar costs $1”), value is subjective (“It’s 3am and no store is open, I’ll…

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“Drill Baby Drill” is “Dumb Baby Dumb”

Well, it is a Republican idea so is anyone really surprised that “Drill Baby Drill” is “Dumb Baby Dumb?”  I know I’m not. On the campaign trail, Newt Gingrich keeps insisting that if America drilled for more oil, we could return to the days of $2.50-per-gallon gasoline. Michael Conathan says this is dubious, noting that drilling…

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The Nonsense of Common Sense

Common sense is, in a sense, so common.  Common, not in the sense that it is widely found, but rather common in that it is pedestrian and lacking in subtlety.  It’s an appeal to a base understanding that is not founded on facts or evidence.  It’s common. This is why…

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Punk Economics: Episode 2

Enjoy! If you missed it, here’s the link to Episode One.

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