Sprinkling Reason Into an Ocean of Bulls**t
Covid has integrated itself wholly among society since March. This thorough insinuation of every aspect of life has had a deeply personal impact for contact, transaction, and social reciprocity. The general public has a responsiblity, like during the 1918 pandemic, to perform certain acts to prevent the spread of the disease. The 1918 pandemic flu... Continue Reading →
Recently, Parler, the conservative alternative to Twitter/Facebook, has been garnering a lot of media attention. I'm going to sign up and investigate the site which is purportedly a bastion of free speech in which there are few rules. Source: Parler.com After myriad compliants that Facebook was censoring conservative political speech, republicans and Trump supporters organized... Continue Reading →
The MN Fed has issued a working paper recently concerning monopolies, which is an important topic in my opinion. The themes involved in the paper are relevant to the following topics: Monopolies and their effect on the economyHow monopolies develop and are protectedHow monopolies worsen economic inequality The board game Monopoly was actually called "The... Continue Reading →
As many of you know, I have been writing for The Minnesota Reformer these last few months. I appreciate deeply those who follow my blog and I must admit that I have spent a far greater deal of energy on my Reformer writing than this blog. That said, for those of you who are interested... Continue Reading →
First, Foreign policy encompasses a much larger policy area than trade. The reason I've chose trade as a proxy for foreign relations is that it is a telling signal for the relationship between two countries. What is revealed in these trade agreements in the future which these two countries intend to share. This has been... Continue Reading →
What precipitated this post more recently is a reaction to the "non-maskers". These are people who believe that wearing a mask in public is not only useless, but an infringement on their constitutional rights. However, this ideology, if I can call it that, is only the most recent symptom of a larger trend. What I... Continue Reading →
There has been a baffling pushback to the measures that we have taken to combat the Coronavirus. The U.S. has a long track record of extreme individualism which in this case equates to "you can't tell me what to do". A mistrust of the government is one of the founding tenets of our constitution, so... Continue Reading →
I am not a health expert. I am an economic policy person. In cases where health care is concerned, I defer to experts. I am fortunate to live in a state with a world class health care system, which includes clinics, hospitals, and medical research facilities. The University of Minnesota Medical Research division wields a... Continue Reading →
As much as 17% of the workforce is unemployed, or around 22 million workers. For perspective, the unemployment high during the great recession was 10%. Here is a nifty chart from Forbes: So, are we faced with another long, slow recovery? Well, the fact that the figures are so huge and impact so rapid, it's... Continue Reading →
Construction, specifically new builds (housing and commercial) are leading indicators of the economy. As of February 2020, there were about 125,000 Minnesotan workers employed in construction, representing a little over 4% of the total state workforce. Construction as a whole contributed a whopping 11.3 billion dollars to the MN GDP in 2018 (the most recent... Continue Reading →
