Remember peak oil? Remember when oil prices were $140 a barrel and Goldman Sachs predicted they would soon reach $200? Now, the latest news is that oil prices have gone up all the way to $34 a barrel. Last fall, Goldman Sachs predicted prices would fall to $20 a barrel, which other analysts argued was […]
The Zika virus is spreading by mosquitoes northward through Latin America, possibly correlated with birth defects such as microcephaly in infants. Stories and photos of their abnormally small skulls are making headlines. The World Health Organization reports that four million people could be infected by the end of 2016. On Monday, the WHO is meeting […]
What happens when, in a country where workers are free to move, a region raises its minimum wage? Do those with the fewest skills seek out the regions with the highest wage floors? New minimum wage research by economist Joan Monras of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) attempts to answer that question. […]
In recent years, politicians set impossibly high mandates for the amounts of ethanol motorists must buy in 2022, while also setting impossibly high standards for the fuel economy of cars sold in 2025. To accomplish these conflicting goals, motorists are now given tax credits to drive heavily-subsidized electric cars, even as they will supposedly be required to buy more […]
On Monday, the political world watched as the early results trickled in from the Iowa caucuses. First, Donald Trump was ahead, then Ted Cruz overtook him, then Marco Rubio started creeping up. In the final count, Cruz won convincingly with 28 percent, Trump came in second with 24 percent, and Rubio took home bronze with 23 percent. Commentators […]
Willie Sutton was one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history. Over three decades, the dashing criminal robbed a hundred banks, escaped three prisons, and made off with millions. Today, he is best known for Sutton’s Law: Asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, Sutton allegedly quipped, “Because that’s where the money is.” Sutton’s Law explains something unusual about Bernie […]
According to our president’s final State of the Union, we’ve recovered from the economic crisis and now enjoy the strongest, most durable economy in the world. Obama does acknowledge that startups and small businesses may need some help, so he wants to reignite our “sprit of innovation” — which he plans to do by putting […]
Highway traffic began to slow outside of Boston as we made our way to the airport. My wife was driving, so I took out my $100 Android phone and opened Google Maps. Google Traffic instantly showed me, in real time, the best route to avoid delays and estimated the number of minutes we’d save by […]
On the morning of October 19, 1927, the Commonwealth of Virginia sterilized Carrie Buck. Dr. John Bell — whose name would forever be linked with Carrie’s in the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell — cut her open and removed a section from each of her Fallopian tubes. In his notes, Dr. Bell noted that “this was the first case […]
If you called Donald Trump a Nazi, he’d probably take offense, even though his nationalism is socialistic. If you called Bernie Sanders a Nazi, you’d be dismissed out of hand, though his socialism is avowedly nationalistic. But did you know that Adolf Hitler himself took offense when the word was applied to him and his […]
We’ve all heard it said that the “rich are getting richer” while the middle class suffers. Political figures on both the right and left frequently speak about the need to “bring back” or “restore” the “disappearing” middle class. Pew Research Center just put out a report that calls those ideas into question, according to a recent Washington Post opinion piece. The report […]
Diane Coyle has reviewed Robert Gordon’s new book (out late January), The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. Gordon’s central argument will be familiar to readers of his work. In his view, the main technological and productivity-enhancing innovations that drove American growth in the early to […]
The Great Recession (or the Great Hangover) that began in 2008 did not have to happen. Its causes and consequences are not mysterious. Indeed, this particular and very painful episode affirms what the best nonpartisan economists have tried to tell our politicians and policy-makers for decades, namely, that the more they try to inflate and […]
Nothing gets me going more than overt economic ignorance. I know I’m not alone. Consider the justified roasting that Bernie Sanders got on social media for wondering why student loans come with interest rates of 6 or 8 or 10 percent while a mortgage can be taken out for only 3 percent. (The answer, of […]
UberEATS is delicious. You pull up the Uber app, choose among three to five menu options (usually between $8 and $12), and your meal is delivered within 10 minutes. Payment is through Uber, and there is no delivery fee. Service is rapidly expanding, and slow-to-catch-up regulators have yet to devise a way to stymie its […]