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America’s Most Important Economic Storyteller Is Confused
What is needed is some signal “that would tell us whether economic activity was making us better off or worse off,”
Bill McKibben • Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Perhaps an even more problematic set of feedback loops are those between economic forecasts and economic policy. If, for instance, the economy is forecasted to go into recession, the government and the Federal Reserve will presumably take steps to ameliorate the risk or at least soften the blow. Part of the problem, then, is that forecasters like H
... See moreNate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
The challenge to economists might be compared to the one faced by weather forecasters. They face two of the same fundamental problems. First, the economy, like the atmosphere, is a dynamic system: everything affects everything else and the systems are perpetually in motion. In meteorology, this problem is quite literal, since the weather is subject
... See moreNate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
Zoom out more, and you’ll see that scarcity is also the story of the U.S. economy. After years of failing to invest in technology at our ports, we have a shipping-delay crisis. After years of a deliberate policy to reduce visa issuance for immigrants, we suddenly can’t find enough workers for our schools, factories, restaurants, or hotels. After de... See more
The Atlantic • A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems
Will we update our scripts and stories about how the world actually works? Or is this a conversation that people just don’t want to have? Is it easier to pretend that everyone can make it?
I don’t have good answers to these questions, but I sense the disconnect between what people believe at a societal level and the market finding reality of an econ
... See morePaul Millerd • The Individualism Myth | #241
I thought I should comment on these developments and the outlook, and the result was a memo called Nobody Knows, published four days later. I affirmed my ignorance of the future as usual, but to an even greater degree given that all prior expectations had been upended. Nobody knew – especially me – whether the spiral could be arrested. Nevertheless... See more