Tag: tariffs

RoW: Links for 3rd December, 2019

Five articles today, all from the NYT, about news from America that gives one a perspective of that (always, but especially right now) fascinating nation.

 

  1. “The Trump administration said on Monday that a new French tax that hit American technology companies discriminated against the United States, a declaration that could lead to retaliatory tariffs as high as 100 percent on French wines.”
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    Click here for the story and you might also want to read this. I have not read the book myself, but it came up in a conversation just yesterday. I will read it soon enough. Also, I can never understand how Kindle books are more expensive compared to printed ones. Anybody has any ideas?
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  2. “I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population. In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.”
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    Cause and effect, correlation and causation, statistics and economics, with a healthy glug of politics. Whats not to like (and dislike)?
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  3. “Should the demagogue succeed in winning the presidency, impeachment in theory provides the fail-safe protection. And yet the demagogue’s political tool kit, it turns out, may be his most effective defense. It is a constitutional paradox: The very behaviors that necessitate impeachment supply the means for the demagogue to escape it.”
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    I have subscribed to the NYT long enough to call this piece typical, and you should ask yourself if you think that to be a good thing or a bad thing.
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  4. “These tensions culminated in King Philip’s War of 1675-76, in which the English killed thousands of Native people — including Ousamequin’s son, Pumetacom — and enslaved thousands more. Plymouth and Massachusetts celebrated their bloody victory with a day of thanksgiving.”
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    Thanksgiving explained.
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  5. “This year, we are rounding up the worst tech products we often see presented as holiday gifts and are recommending superior alternatives, many of which may go on sale on Black Friday. Consider this a guide to steering away from presents that end up in landfills and toward buying what may bring your loved ones joy.”
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    A “worst of” shopping list. What does this say about shopping?

EC101: Links for 11th July, 2019

  1. “The two approaches reflect different attitudes toward risk, the role of government and collective social responsibility. Analogous to America’s debate over health insurance, the American philosophy has been to make more resilient buildings an individual choice, not a government mandate.”
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    Risk, how (not) to measure it and therefore understand it. As Taleb is fond of saying, “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”.
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  2. “Is it possible that interest rates are a net input cost in the Indian context? This existential monetary question is yet to be even acknowledged by economists, let alone addressed.”
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    A superb (and I use the word advisedly) overview of monetary policy and how it works in India.
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  3. “I would challenge my students at the start of the new semester with the following three questions; 1) how much does it cost you to go to the beach (we lived in a coastal city)? 2) should Tiger Woods mow his own lawn? or 3) should Lebron and Kobie go to college?”
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    Opportunity costs, economic costs and accounting costs – all in one article, and therefore a great read.
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  4. “The cornerstone of Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw’s introductory economics textbook, Principles of Economics, is a synthesis of economic thought into Ten Principles of Economics (listed in the first table below). A quick perusal of these will likely affirm the reader’s suspicions that synthesizing economic thought into Ten Principles is no easy task, and may even lead the reader to suspect that the subtlety and concision required are not to be found in the pen of N. Gregory Mankiw.”
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    A hilarious (but perhaps only to an economist) take on the ten principles of economics.
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  5. “And the long version of the history is crucial here. It shows that for much of the 20th century, total taxes on the very wealthy were much higher than they are now. Before World War II, the average rate hovered around 70 percent. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, the average rate was above 50 percent.”
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    David Leonhardt on taxing the rich in America. His newsletter is worth subscribing to, by the way.