Author: Matt Bruenig

Garett Jones has a really bad post at econlib. And I mean really bad. Jones seems to think he has hit upon something really clever by analyzing the income effect and substitution effect in a way that is sensitive to the resulting government spending. For those unfamiliar, the income effect refers to the way taxes… Continue reading Garett Jones’ confused idea

Mike Konczal has a good piece in the American Prospect about the coming possibility of full employment and the monetary policy battles on the horizon. Central to Konczal’s piece is the debate over the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). In lieu of giving a full explanation of NAIRU, it suffices here to simply say… Continue reading The problem of NAIRU and racial justice

Yesterday, Suzy Khimm of Wonkblog had a post about some of the difficulties involved in cross-country comparisons of youth economic woes. Generally, people refer to headline numbers about youth unemployment, but that is not as meaningful a number as it might first appear. Different countries have different percentages of individuals in higher education and vocational… Continue reading The best way to measure “wasted youth”