The General Economics Thread

Oh yeah, a lot of employers abuse the "salaried employees", because it many places, they're exempt from the maximum work hour laws. They get paid the same every week regardless of hours worked, so the business doesn't need to pay more. Several dollar stores in the states try to get away with only hiring a few hourly employees and pushing most of the burden on the salaried ones.

Not Three Laws compliant.

5 Flawed Tests that control our lives (Cracked)

Adam Smith as Malthusian and Utilitarian: "The Surplus Population".

What is the real Keynesianism?

Europe's Debt Wish: Kenneth Rogoff argues that economic recovery for Europe will require some form of Debt Restructuring or Rescheduling

Three Paths to full employment: Have the government spend more money, lower the value of the dollar, or have firms reduce work hours as an alternative to laying people off.

The unemployment costs of below-target inflation

Seven Weird Things Money Does to Your Brain

Desert Theory Rehashed

You want economic reforms to go through? Then pray for a major economic crisis.

A great paper on global income inequality

The potential hazards of a global savings glut

edited 9th Jul '14 11:23:57 AM by PotatoesRock

Krugman: On Losing Interest

Krugman: More on Class and Monetary Policy

Krugman: Swedish Sadomonetarist Setback

Anyhow, what about the article I posted on the last page, about the unpaid overtime of salaried employees?

Keep Rolling On

Seems very similar to the problems the US faces with similar issues, which relates to firms on both sides of the Atlantic wanting more productivity but not having to pay for it.

Either you start paying them or you reassign labor to have multiple people in the same job at different times. As the article says, it comes off as a very "The center cannot hold".

And morning Economics grabbag:

Sex, drugs and the proper measurement of economic activity

QEIninity Not

Morning Must-Read: Robert Waldmann: Flows From Unemployment to Employment & Extended Unemployment Insurance

What Is the Macroeconomic Cost of Not Expanding Medicaid?

The Invisible Economy

edited 10th Jul '14 9:38:45 AM by PotatoesRock

And afternoon grabbag:

John Quiggin Searches for a Use for and Explanation of Labor-Market Search Theory

What to do in a market correction

Inflation Targeting: A monetary policy regime whose time has come and gone.

The Singularity in our past Light-Cone

Surprise, surprise: Americans hold on to their paychecks

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Annoying but true. If everyone spent their savings, we would be out of this recession in a month. But that's a very, very deep-seated human instinct that is hard to fix. The government has many ways to encourage spending, but they aren't using any of them.

It would represent a burst of spending, but it would dry up quickly, and businesses need sustained spending to restore hiring. In fact, right now the private sector in general is not where we need stimulus the most. We do need construction spending and minimum hours/wages increases, but the biggest gap in employment is still among teachers, firefighters, and policemen.

Krugman has been studying the effects of low returns on interest-bearing assets as a major driver of the current "inflation hysteria" drive in politics. His latest column as well as his blog posts on the matter have been getting some strident and near-hysterical pushback from folks who wax dramatic about how inflation steals money from grannies living off their retirement accounts.

One of the more interesting points is that, while the average annual interest income for older Americans in 2012 was $3,500, the median was $255, implying that the anti-inflation hysteria is, again, being driven almost entirely by the 0.01%.

edited 11th Jul '14 7:23:15 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

SEC twigs onto possible $4 billion penny-stock manipulation

Gotta say, this is a brazen fake business.

No revenue, no assets, and one employee.

Wild.

I think the "Well the average is 3500 but the median is 255" thing goes over a lot of people's heads.

Trying and Failing to Understand the 84th BIS Annual Report: Monetarist, Deleveraging, Fiscalist, and ???

The reason that the BIS position is not making any sense to this guy is because it makes no sense.

@Fighteer: The difference between the Yellen/Bernanke position and the BIS position ("Fear Not" and "Flame of Destruction") may be of interest to you. This is the difference between Chicago and Austrian economics in a nutshell.

Yellen's position is perfectly understandable, and it would even be sane except that it won't work under the current situation; "we can fix the problem by making easy money available." Might even be a sane position, except that equilibrium interest is below zero right now. (But it's worth noting that a wealth tax is rather monetarist in character!)

The BIS position is to ignore everything that's going on right now and continue pushing an inflation-hawk agenda.

edited 11th Jul '14 9:31:45 PM by Ramidel

Can someone explain why Norway hasn't joined the EU? I can understand why Switzerland hasn't , as well as the Balkans, but Norway kinda sticks out

Oil monies. They've always been independent spirits too, ever since they split off from Sweden.

Part of their problem is that all their neighbours and biggest trading partners are in the EU, so they often have to comply with EU regs anyway by default. Hence the so-called "fax democracy" whereby Oslo is consulted on EU issues, but has no formal or decisive voice - with their latest legislation being "faxed" from the European Commission.

Most of the Balkans want in, by the way.

edited 12th Jul '14 8:19:15 AM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Slovenia and Croatia are in, for example. Montenegro is not in the EU, but they're part of the Eurozone.

Serbia might want to get in, hence why they've been quiet about Kosovo.

A failed referendum in 1972 and 1994, just like in Switzerland (there 2001, though).

And speaking of Switzerland, we've recently received an analysis of the TTIP treaty which says that depending upon the form of the treaty, it may result in eonomic growth/shrinkage from -0.5% (in case of a pure trade treaty) and 3.2% (in case of a complete harmonization).

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I believe De Long is kind of being rhetorical, in a "let's at least give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume their argument isn't just shilling".

Hendry and Mizon on the limited value of DSGE models

A Class of their own: Why the super rich are mistaken to believe that they can dispense with government

Kevin Drum: Who's afraid of an itsy bitsy bit of inflation, anyway? (Why inflation tends to sound like a bad idea to the general populace and the super rich alike.)

Realtors hire ruined millionaires to pretend to live in vacant megamansions

How to Miss By a Mile: An Alternative Look at Uber’s Potential Market Size

Welfare Economics: A Table of Contents

Bill Gates: Here’s a Chapter From My Favorite Business Book (It's about Xerox, which has some uncanny resemblances to the rise of the Internet and Digital Piracy. It also has a rather unintended ironic echo about how companies in the 40s to 60s cared about the public welfare of society.)

Clyde Hufbauer: NAFTA 20 Years Later: Setting the Record Straight

edited 12th Jul '14 12:48:42 PM by PotatoesRock

So norway has no good reason to stay out of the EU?

No, they have a plenty good reason: their people don't want in, and they can afford it. On the other hand, them not being in the EU when all their big neighbours and trading partners are does have its drawbacks.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

This is the Economics thread, not the European Politics thread.

Economic Depressions are a choice

Demand in the gaps?

Burberry shareholders vote against remuneration report

Keep Rolling On