Links tagged with “economics”
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What Kind of Country Do We Want? | Marilynne Robinson | The New York Review of Books
“We are the richest country in history, therefore richer than the generations that built it, but we cannot bring ourselves even to make repairs.”
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Trillions – What is a trillion dollars? — Information is Beautiful
Nice comparison of many countries’ GDP, companies’ values, potential spending plans, potential savings, past events, personal wealth, etc.
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William Davies · Destination Unknown: Sociology Gone Wrong · LRB 9 June 2022
On inequality, capitalism, sociology, nation states, colonialism.
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Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Looking for Tether’s Money - Bloomberg
Explaining how finance works. I’m glad he didn’t write economic text books decades ago because I might have stuck with economics A Level.
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Exxon Lost a Climate Proxy Fight - Bloomberg
If every news story’s background was explained as well as Matt Levine explains this Exxon vote thing then I’d have a much better understanding of what was going on in the world.
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A Land of Monopolists: From Portable Toilets to Mixed Martial Arts - BIG by Matt Stoller
Interesting to consider the private-equity-fuelled monopolies in so many (relatively) small industries. Business for business’ sake. More in the following issue.
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John Lanchester · Good New Idea: Universal Basic Income · LRB 18 July 2019
Seems like a decent overview of the options, nicely written as ever.
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Considerations On Cost Disease | Slate Star Codex
On why (American) housing costs, teaching, healthcare, universities, etc cost much, much more than they did a few decades ago, but are, if anything, worse. (via @genmon)
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Why Growth Will Fall | by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books
On how the rate of increase of standard of living and economic growth in the US was greatest from 1870-1970 and will never be the same again.
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Income and inequality historical data explorer
Graphing the data for successive UK governments.
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A-Z Index of Euromyths 1992 to 2016 (European Commission in the UK)
Hundreds of myths about EU rules. (via @dracos)
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Jackson Lears reviews ‘The Age of Acquiescence’ by Steve Fraser · LRB 16 July 2015
How left-leaning beliefs have disappeared in the US, mostly over the first half of the 20th century. (Subscribers only)
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A Brief History of Money - IEEE Spectrum
Seemed like a good overview.
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The Fall of the Creative Class
On how Richard Florida’s creative class theory doesn’t show causality. Worth reading Florida’s and then Bures’ follow-ups. (via @timoarnall)
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I’m Just Now Realizing How Stupid We Are
One thing learned from writing 3000 Motley Fool columns: “I’ve learned that short-term thinking is at the root of most of our problems, whether it’s in business, politics, investing, or work.” One for the futurists there. (via Kottke)
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A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100
(June 2011) Really good look at corporations in a very broad sense, from East India Company, Smithian Growth, Mercantilist Economy (1600-1800), to Schumpterian Growh, Industrial Economy (1800-2000), and now Coasean Grown and the Perspective Economy. (via Interconnected I think)
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Thomas Piketty’s Capital: everything you need to know about the surprise bestseller | Books | The Guardian
Paul Mason’s good (I assume) summary of ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’.
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The Task Rabbit Economy
(Oct 2013) Suggestions for fixing non-Nordic Western (specifically US) economies. It’s not technology, TaskRabbit et al, increasing inequality, but capitalism.
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London’s Great Exodus
Seen lots of links to this today. Rather depressing, if you want London to be somewhere you and your friends can afford to live. “The city is essentially a tax haven with great theater, free museums and formidable dining.”
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RSS commission new research into public perceptions of statistics | RSSeNews
The British public thinks it lives in Daily Mail fantasy horror world. (via @wonderlandblog)
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The Way They Live Now by Michael Lewis | The New York Review of Books
A good review by Michael Lewis of John Lanchester’s ‘Capital’. I’ve realised there’s, often something extra enjoyable in reviews of very British books by Americans, and vice versa.
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Post-Work: A Guide for the Perplexed | Jacobin
More on basic income guarantees etc.
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From the generalized resource curse to communism | An und für sich
I think the group I was in, in a class in Houston in 2000, proposed a guaranteed basic income like this for our imagined future society on Mars. (via @cshirky)
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Short Cuts (London Review of Books)
Paul Myerscough on Pret a Manger. 91% of employees are immigrants. Social security as a subsidy to companies whose products would otherwise be too expensive for their non-social-security-receiving customers.
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Let’s Call it Failure (London Review of Books)
John Lanchester on good, if depressing, form on the state of the UK economy and “austerity”.
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What Makes Countries Rich or Poor? by Jared Diamond | The New York Review of Books
Diamond reviewing ‘Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty’. an interesting read. Social change etc. I love that stuff.
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Instagram as an island economy (11 Apr., 2012, at Interconnected)
The same with Matt Webb’s thoughts on Lanchester’s piece. Belatedly adding it to my link memory.
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John Lanchester · Marx at 193 · LRB 5 April 2012
Just realised I never Pinboarded this at the time, only wrote about it. For completion’s sake.
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Ian Bogost - What should we do for a living?
An interesting addition to that stuff about the value of Instagram etc coming from the activity of its users (or not): Do those users only have time for this activity because of the “leisure time bought by jobs in the non-Internet economy”?
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British Debt History - NYTimes.com
UK natonal debt as a percentage of GDP since 1830. The current levels, justification for all these cuts, are nothing.
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New Statesman - The tax haven in the heart of Britain
Not sure why I didn’t save this link at the time, in February. Nicholas Shaxson on the City of London.
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BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: The Curae of TINA
blimey, just caught up with this, and it’s an incredible read. Hayek, Radio Caroline, Thatcher, Institute for Economic Affairs… so many things. I really wish the BBC would get a non-Flash video player though.
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BBC News - A Point of View: The revolution of capitalism
John Gray on how capitalism is destroying the bourgeoisie, and how Marx was right about the evils of capitalism, but wrong about communism being the solution. (via Stellar)
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Opinion - Image - NYTimes.com
Graphs and charts showing how inequality and household debt in the USA have risen since 1980, especially compared to the more equitable period from 1945-80 (even though productivity was still rising then too). (via Daring Fireball)
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Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - NYTimes.com
Billionaire Jim Andrews in ‘Doonesbury’ won’t be pleased when he reads Warren Buffett’s latest article.
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BBC News - One word we don’t hear enough: ‘Erm’
From January 2010, Michael Blastland shows how wrong the Bank of England’s GDP projection fan charts can be. (Also, that daft “The face of uncertainty…” stock photo and caption is priceless.)
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LRB · James Meek · In the Sorting Office
A long, interesting look at the problems facing the Royal Mail and how the privatised Dutch and German postal services are managing.
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Potlatch: An open letter to the hipster
Will Davies calling on hipsters to be more politically aware (to very crudely summarise). Reminds me a bit of Adam Curtis at The Story talking about how the stories we tell online ignore the political structure of the net. (via Tom Taylor)
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Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey » Reading Capital
“David Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume I for nearly 40 years, and his lectures are now available online for the first time. This open course consists of 13 video lectures of Professor Harvey’s close chapter by chapter reading of Capital, Volume I.” I bet that’s good. Also, CC-licensed.
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LRB · Benjamin Kunkel · How Much Is Too Much?
“Harvey observes these contradictions sharpening over time, as finance capital becomes ever more mobile while beds of infrastructure grow increasingly Procrustean: ‘The disjunction of the quest for hypermobility and an increasingly sclerotic built environment (think of the huge amount of fixed capital embedded in Tokyo or New York City) becomes ever more dramatic.’”
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LRB · Ross McKibbin · Nothing to do with the economy
On the cuts. The bigger the cuts, the more it makes the economy seem in more trouble than it is, and this in turn makes the previous Labour government look more incompetent. Also, the Liberals as a friendly fig leaf hiding the Tories’ extreme ideas. Fuckers.
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Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics - GOOD
It’s staggering, as ever, to see how financially unequal the country is, but also fascinating to see how people don’t realise it. I’m not sure I’d have responded much more accurately, and it’s also probably similar in the UK. (via @ianbetteridge)
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Our Banana Republic - NYTimes.com
“From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.” And yet still many average people vote for the Republicans. (via Daring Fireball)
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LRB · Stephen Sedley · Enemies of All Mankind
For the bit about pirates, the old fashioned kind, and their equitable pay scales.
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LRB · John Lanchester · The Great British Economy Disaster
Another must-read. “This is a direct transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the banks, and the only difference between it and an actual, physical licence to print money is that the banks don’t have a piece of paper with the words ‘Official Licence to Print Money’ written across the top.”
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Coriandr / lottielodge / Handmade socks, realistic price
I love this kind of thing. I’d like to see how much your average mass-produced-in-China garment should cost if the workers were paid UK minimum wage.
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Giving What We Can
A pledge to give 10% of one’s income to what they reckon are the most cost-effective charities. (via Preoccupations)
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Government Beyond Obama? - The New York Review of Books
A review of ‘The Case for Big Government’ from March 2009, good at putting levels of US federal government spending in a historical perspective.
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Cambridge University - CamTV - Video and Audio - The Phillips Machine with Allan McRobie
Video of the machine that simulates the economy using water. A few years back I couldn’t even find a picture of this thing. The internet’s getting better.
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The Online Photographer: The Trough of No Value
It’s lovely when you find a phrase to name a thing you’ve always known but never been able to reduce to a handful of words. (via Kottke)