Noted for June 3, 2013
David Cay Johnston: Inequality Rising — All Thanks To Government Policies | Miles Kimball: De Laudibus Trolles | Venkat: A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100 | Dani Rodrik (2011): Turkey’s Democratic Dusk | Justin Lahart: Fed's Challenge: Avoid the Bull's Horns |
Catherine Rampell: Affordable Care Act Could Be Good for Entrepreneurship: "The Affordable Care Act is expected to produce a sharp increase in entrepreneurship next year, according to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Urban Institute and Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. The number of self-employed people is expected to rise by 1.5 million — a relative increase of more than 11 percent — as a direct result of the health care overhaul…. Economists have looked at whether this insurance-related job lock is deterring self-employment and the formation of new businesses, and the data suggest it is." | Paul Krugman: A Sad Story--I Mean, AS-AD Story |
Timothy Burke: Recombinant Friedman: "My rephrasing of Thomas Friedman’s column today: 'One of the best ways to learn about the changing labor market, if you can’t find a taxi driver to have a conversation with on your way to the airport, is to find some well-connected guy who used to work at Goldman-Sachs, who has a start-up that he’s desperately trying to flog, and let him tell you all about how great his start-up idea is. If you let that guy write half your column for you, you’ll discover that today’s employers, unlike yesterday’s, would like their employees to have useful skills. And they don’t care where you got your skills from…. Just take the energy to teach yourself neurosurgery, high-tech manufacturing assembly, preparation of petri dish cultures, Python, persuasive analytic writing, and graphic design when you get home from working two different low-wage service jobs, and you’re sure to find an employer looking for those skills who will overlook you because there’s no real way on a resume to show that you’ve acquired those skills through self-study…. A world of opportunity awaits if you know the right people at Davos.'"
Maggie Lange: Here's Some Extremely Rare Color Footage of New York City in 1939: Thanks to the attention of Romano Archives, some incredibly well-preserved 70-year-old footage of New York City has emerged. Filmed in 16mm Kodachrome by Jean Vivier, a French tourist, it captures street scenes and city views from New York in the summer of 1939. This three minute gem documents fun in fountains, perusing Chinatown, luxuriously large looking taxis, and a bevy of hats. Yes—these are the days when everyone was in a hat and in this little film there are: porkpie hats, newsy caps, straw hats, bowler hats, fancy lady hats, a safari looking hat, wide-brim hats, conductors caps, and other stylish headdresses. Everyone looks pretty dignified:
Paul Krugman http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/the-liquidationist-urge/: "Kinsley’s original screed about inflation… is very worth reading… it is pure Schumpeter/Hayek/Mellon liquidationism: 'In short, I can’t help feeling that the gold bugs are right. No, I’m not stashing gold bars under my bed. But that’s only because I lack the courage of my convictions. My fear is not the result of economic analysis. It’s more from the realm of psychology. I mean mine. […] But this cure has been one ice-cream sundae after another. It can’t be that easy, can it? The puritan in me says that there has to be some pain. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been plenty of economic pain. But that pain has come from the recession itself, not the cure.' Look, folks, when I write about the urge to see economics as a morality play, I am not just inventing this out of thin air. I read a lot; I also talk to a fair number of these people at things like Group of 30 meetings. Yes, there’s class interest; yes, there’s disaster capitalism at work. But the gut feeling that there must be pain (your pain, of course, not theirs) is very, very real too."
