Things to Read at Nighttime on November 2, 2014
Must- and Shall-Reads:
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: Fighting the Last War: “Why are helicopter drops taboo in policy circles? Why is it illegal in the Eurozone? The answer is a fear that if you allow governments access to the printing presses, high inflation will surely follow at some point. Many of those who worry about helicopter money are fairly relaxed about Quantitative Easing (QE), which involves much more money creation than would be involved in a helicopter drop…. The key reason they are more relaxed is that central banks are in control of QE, whereas governments would initiate money financing of deficits…. I think it is possible to take two quite different views…. The first is that, in most OECD economies today where macroeconomic understanding is better and information more available, inflation targets are more than sufficient to prevent us experiencing the inflation rates of the 1970s again…. A second view is that we have the story of the 1960s and 1970s all wrong. We did not get high inflation in advanced economies because governments wanted to monetise their own profligacy… [but] because of the combination of a number of specific factors: trade union pressure in the face of shocks that tended to reduce real wages, underestimation of the natural rate (and a poor understanding of how monetary policy should work), and placing too great a priority on achieving full employment. The latter might have been a legacy of the 1930s: policymakers were also fighting the last war…. I think both views are probably correct. As a result, I’m much more relaxed about money financing of deficits in the current situation…. However, irrational fear of rising debt in a recession has similar characteristics to fighting the last war: deficit bias is a problem, but a recession is not the time to worry about it. I think this is why I am not persuaded by this article by Ken Rogoff: yes, in the grand scheme of things we should worry about inflation and debt, but right now we are worrying about them too much and therefore failing to deal with more pressing concerns.” -
: A Fed insider explains why the central bank is making a big mistake: “Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, put out a statement this weekend explaining why he thinks his colleagues made a mistake by bringing an end to Quantitative Easing. He would prefer they emulate Japan by continuing to print money until inflation gets up to 2 percent…. ‘In my assessment, the medium-term outlook for inflation has shown no overall improvement since last December and, indeed, is arguably worse. Failing to act in response to this subdued inflation outlook increases the downside risk to the credibility of our 2 percent inflation target. Market-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations have fallen recently to unusually low levels, a decline that I believe reflects that kind of increased downside risk…. Of course, there are costs and benefits to every monetary policy action and inaction, and assessing those costs and benefits is by no means straightforward. On this occasion, my assessment differed from that of my colleagues. Such occasional differences in perspectives are, I think, hardly surprising given the complicated nature of the decision problem that we face. But those differences should not obscure the collective commitment that my FOMC colleagues and I all share to the dual mandate objectives of price stability and maximum employment that Congress has established for the Committee. I look forward to working with my colleagues in future meetings, under Chair Yellen’s leadership, to achieve those objectives.'” -
: How Universal Basic Income Will Save Us From the Robot Uprising: “Looking ahead to the future, we may have little choice but to implement it. Given the ever-increasing concentration of wealth and the frightening prospect of technological unemployment, it will be required to prevent complete social and economic collapse…. The idea has also been supported by the esteemed economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter of whom advocated for a minimum guaranteed income via a ‘negative income tax’…. Some thinkers contend that broader social restructuring will have to accompany the problems wrought by technological unemployment…. Gary Marchant, Yvonne Angelica, and James Hennessy present six possible policy options: Protecting Employment…. Sharing Work…. Making New Work…. Redistribution…. Education…. Fostering a New Social Contract…” -
: Never Mind Then): “Philadelphia is a ‘school reformers’ paradise…. All of the predictable things have come to pass. Much corruption in the charter schools. Money siphoned off from the actual public schools. Constant turmoil for students as schools (both charter and public) close, either by fiat or because they collapse. No evidence that educational performance has improved (the opposite). And the solution will be more of the same until the whole thing collapses and what money is left just goes into the hands of the grifters. Because we love our children.” -
: Returning to the Nest: Debt and Parental Co-residence Among Young Adults: “We estimate the relationship between current period debt and subsequent decisions to co-reside with a parent. Our results indicate that indebtedness – as measured by average loan balances, declining credit scores and delinquency on accounts – increases flows into parental co-residence. Moreover, after moving in, delinquency and low credit scores increase time spent in co-residence. We find that the changing debt portfolios of young adults over this period – characterized by rising student loan debt and small declines in credit card, auto and mortgage debt – can predict 30 percent of the observed increase in flows into co-residence, and 26 percent of the observed increase in time spent in co-residence.”
Should Be Aware of:
- : The New Abolitionism
- What To Do If Trolls Have Doxx’d You With A #trollattack (with images, tweets) · adriarichards · Storify
- : This Man Uses Twitter To Augment His Damaged Memory ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community
- : The Pernicious Myth of the Moderate Republican
- : A few useful job market resources
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: When Conspiracy Theories Don’t Fit the Media Narrative – The Atlantic: “For those interested enough in the 2014 elections to read stories about them in the premier newspapers of our time, The Washington Post and The New York Times, you would know about the bios of Ernst and Cotton, two prize GOP recruits this election cycle. But you would be likely clueless about the wacky or extreme things they have said…. A Nexis search shows that the Post has had four references to Ernst and Agenda 21—all by Greg Sargent on his blog from the left, The Plum Line, and none on the news pages of the paper. But there have been dozens of references to Braley’s spat over the neighbor’s chickens, including a front-page story. The New York Times had zero references to Ernst and Agenda 21, but seven, including in a Gail Collins column, to Braley and chickens. The Post did have a fact-check column by Glenn Kessler devoted to the Cotton claims on Mexican drug lords and ISIS terrorists—Cotton did not fare well—but no news stories. The Times did not mention it at all…. What it suggests is how deeply the eagerness to pick a narrative and stick with it, and to resist stories that contradict the narrative, is embedded in the culture of campaign journalism. The alternative theory, that the Republican establishment won by surrendering its ground to its more ideologically extreme faction, picking candidates who are folksy and have great resumes but whose issue stances are much the same as their radical Tea Party rivals, goes mostly ignored…. [There are] no stories saying that references to Agenda 21 or talking about terrorists and drug lords out to kill Arkansans were disqualifying…. It’s not a very good way for readers to figure out how the people they vote for might actually behave in the Senate. And that’s not very good news for voters or the political process.”