Make Progress, Not Work! Bryan Caplan’s best single video
21 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, economics of information, economics of media and culture, growth miracles, liberalism, Public Choice Tags: Bryan Caplan, capitalism and freedom, makework bias, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Julian Simon and William Buckley on Cross–Fire
18 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, liberalism, resource economics Tags: commodity prices, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, Julian Simon, peak oil, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact, William Buckley
Joseph Schumpeter on The Great Enrichment
18 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, liberalism Tags: capitalism and freedom, creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy
18 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, economics of information, economics of media and culture, growth disasters, growth miracles, liberalism Tags: antimarket bias, Bryan Caplan, capitalism and freedom, life expectancies, living standards, pessimism bias, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Has the ‘Peak Oil’ drama peaked?
17 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, resource economics Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, peak oil, The Great Enrichment
Remember Peak Oil? Just a few years ago Green Party leaders Jeanette Fitzsimons and Russell Norman routinely issued warnings about ‘the world running out of oil’ and told us that we needed to move freight off roads and on to shipping and rail, and commuters out of cars and on to trains, buses and bicycles.
They weren’t alone of course. An April 2006 article in The Economist reported that:
For years a small group of geologists has been claiming that the world has started to grow short of oil, that alternatives cannot possible replace it and that an imminent peak in production will lead to economic disaster. In recent months this view has gained wider acceptance on Wall Street and in the media. Recent books on oil have bewailed the threat. Every few weeks, its seems, “Out of Gas”, “The Empty Tank” and “The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can…
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Julian Simon on Resources, Growth and Human Progress
17 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmentalism, health economics, liberalism, resource economics Tags: capitalism and freedom, commodity prices, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, Julian Simon, life expectancies, peak oil, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Why we shouldn’t rely too much on GDP and Human development index to tell us how we are doing
15 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, economics of media and culture Tags: measurement error, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Up to now, I personally think we are yet to come up with a more accurate and adequate way of measuring our welfare, our quality or standard of living, that is, how happy we feel in our lives or how enjoyable and satisfying our lives are. If this is what we are measuring GDP (output) is in so many ways an inadequate measure of welfare because it is concentrating on output, it focuses more on commodities therefore GDP does not capture the happiness and joy got from family and social networks. So some economists have tried to come up with new ways to better measure GDP as a measure of our welfare, and they have broken down welfare into three things that they believe constitute welfare. Firstly, welfare has something to do with consumption of goods and services giving us utility, pleasure, or happiness. Secondly, it also has something to…
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@WJRosenbergCTU A brief history of rising equality in New Zealand
13 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, economics of media and culture, income redistribution, labour economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice Tags: capitalism and freedom, Leftover Left, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact, top 1%, Twitter left
Bill Rosenberg at the Council of Trade Unions was good enough to tweet a Treasury chart that shows next to no increases in inequality in New Zealand for at least 20 years.
A brief history of inequality-from Treasury paper Fig4. Note Employment Contracts Act,GST,income tax,benefit cuts,WFF http://t.co/y4w3cUsgjD—
Bill Rosenberg (@WJRosenbergCTU) June 27, 2015
Inequality in both market and disposable incomes has been stable for a good 20 years, as the above tweet shows, while inequality in consumption has been falling. To back this interpretation of mine up, coincidentally today Bryan Perry published his annual report on income and inequality under the banner of the Ministry of Social Development.
His report showed that there be no significant increase in New Zealand in at least 20 years.
The Great Enrichment by household type in the 20th century
09 Aug 2015 2 Comments
in applied welfare economics, economic history Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, living standards, The Great Enrichment
https://twitter.com/VisualEcon/status/501347052878823425/photo/1
Share of Income Before & After Federal Taxes "An Illustrated Guide to Income" bit.ly/1tfXrse #inequality http://t.co/DnkSWZ6Yov—
Catherine Mulbrandon (@VisualEcon) April 24, 2014
The Great Escape in England 1930 – 2001
03 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, health economics Tags: British economy, capitalism and freedom, child mortality, infant mortality, life expectancies, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape
Deirdre McCloskey’s speech on ‘Bourgeois Dignity’
03 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, survivor principle Tags: Deirdre McCloskey, entrepreneurial alertness, industrial revolution, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
Cumulative Growth in Average Inflation-Adjusted After-Tax Income by Before-Tax Income Group, 1979 to 2011 with 1% annual adjustment for inflation measurement bias
01 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economic history, politics - USA Tags: CPI bias, living standards, measurement errors, The Great Enrichment
The Congressional Budget Office did its best to adjust after-tax incomes for inflation between 1979 in 2011. In figure 1, I added an extra 1% inflation adjustment in every year from 1979. 1% per annum is a common estimate of the inflation bias introduced by the inability of most measures of inflation to account for new goods and upgrades in the quality of existing goods to name but a few bias is in the measurement of consumer price inflation.
Figure 1: Cumulative Growth in Average Inflation-Adjusted After-Tax Income, by Before-Tax Income Group, USA, 1979 to 2011, 1% upward annual adjustment for inflation bias for new goods and quality upgrades
Source: derived from Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2011.
As can be seen from figure 1, with a 1% up left for measurement bias, instead of increases of 48% and 40% in the incomes of the lowest quartile in the middle three quartiles respectively, their after-tax, after inflation incomes about doubled since 1979.
"The rich got richer, true. But…" —@DeirdreMcClosk buff.ly/1Imdv4o http://t.co/M3ERx3JTIn—
HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) June 28, 2015
Well done, capitalism. Everyone was on a working class income in the 1970s is now on a middle-class income. Such are the joys of compounding 1% per year over more than 30 years.
Source: Congressional Budget Office, The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2011.
The original Congressional Budget Office diagram above with the higher income quartiles is presented for comparison. I didn’t present the top quartiles in figure 1 because it made it unreadable because of the dominant influence of the top 1%’s increase in income.
The lesson for the day is small inaccuracies in the measurement of prosperity can over several decades through compounding lead to massive misunderstandings of the increases in prosperity.
Deirdre McCloskey on the Samaritan’s dilemma
30 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, income redistribution, industrial organisation, liberalism, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: Age of Innovation, bourgeoisie deal, capitalism and freedom, Deirdre McCloskey, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Digital poverty in America is less than 3% for young adults
29 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: 10-90 lag, Digital poverty, technology diffusion, The Great Enrichment
15% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? pewrsr.ch/1HYkSgM http://t.co/vL6uRuz5iK—
PewResearch FactTank (@FactTank) July 28, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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