The fact that core inflation is rising on the back of substantial GDP growth and declining unemployment should not come as a surprise. Those who are wringing their hands about economic "overheating" should remember that an absence of price increases would reflect an economy that is still struggling. <
Re: Allen & Nichols in your May 20th piece, when can we start calling out journalists and those who masquerade as journalists, who use the phrase "some [seconomists/Democrats/people/~other vague characterization~] are saying..." ? It is total BS, showing either utter laziness or utter mendaciousness, and is utterly misleading.
Also, and I hesitate to ask this, what is your take on MMT? Is it wishful thinking, or is it as valid as the older theories they oppose?
"People think that they are getting a good deal when they pay the financial sector, even though the overwhelming evidence is that they are, in fact, not"
The problem with this take is that ordinary consumers are, in fact, getting a much better deal for financial services than they did before financial liberalization. The real money in finance is made off the backs of corporations, and investing rich people's money.
But despite what Michael Lewis would have you believe, the executives of large corporations are not patsies. I think a more promising line is principal-agent conflict. A financial service paid for by stakeholders may be beneficial for the people who have the power to contract for it. Remember the old Dilbert cartoon, the one where the investment banker tells the evil little dog CEO "I can help you loot this place and escape"? (https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=%22loot+this+place%22)
To be fair, that does not seem inconsistent with Fischer's analysis.
The contrast between claiming that human presence is a needed social situation to get the best educational results and :
Adam Ozimek: "By 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be remote, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates. Increased productivity and flexibility continue to be key benefits of remote work: Hiring managers cite reduction of non-essential meetings, increased schedule flexibility, and no commute as aspects of remote work that have worked better than expected…"
- should be emphasized. students need social interaction, but business personnel do not? Whatever happened to the "watercooler" meetings and Apple designing offices to enhance interactions?
I wonder whether in universities the need to socialize is more a perception of higher administration needing to see people doing their bidding, and professors needing appreciative live audiences, like [narcissistic] actors. Remember, a significant fraction of students are introverts who gain little from the unwanted social interaction of study groups and other forced interactions. Is this desire for seeing social interaction more extrovert control of the environment?
Re: "The past year has made me more and more certain that the in-person crowded university is an enormous key to a successful collective educational effort. "
Do you have any actual data to support this assertion?
"But we are those who can take squiggles on a page and from them spin-up an imago of the author’s mind and then discuss things and argue with it. We run that sub-Turing imago and instantiation in a separate sandbox on our own wetware, and so even when we are alone we are in a crowd of arguing voices. "
You may think that you have a good representation of another to argue with, but except for a very narrow domain, it is far more likely that your arguments are really random walks based on limited data. The actual person provides the needed feedback to keep a conversation on track. Arguing with a mental representation may have as much reality as a dream sequence.
Re: Wokeness as Old-Time American Religion: ‘Wokeness is much, much more than Critical Race Theory. ...especially the White people who numerically make up the bulk of the woke movement—that street ideology springs from a very old American tradition. It comes from the abolitionist movement, which itself was heavily influenced by Protestant Christianity…
Really? Wokeness is not just a US phenomenon, and white people in the US are also immigrants that had no connection to Christianity and abolitionist movements. In the uS, the fiercest adherents to Christianity represent the very antithesis of wokeness. I'm surprised that the usually smart Noah Smith seems so blind to the composition of the modern West.
Re: Allen & Nichols in your May 20th piece, when can we start calling out journalists and those who masquerade as journalists, who use the phrase "some [seconomists/Democrats/people/~other vague characterization~] are saying..." ? It is total BS, showing either utter laziness or utter mendaciousness, and is utterly misleading.
Also, and I hesitate to ask this, what is your take on MMT? Is it wishful thinking, or is it as valid as the older theories they oppose?
"People think that they are getting a good deal when they pay the financial sector, even though the overwhelming evidence is that they are, in fact, not"
The problem with this take is that ordinary consumers are, in fact, getting a much better deal for financial services than they did before financial liberalization. The real money in finance is made off the backs of corporations, and investing rich people's money.
But despite what Michael Lewis would have you believe, the executives of large corporations are not patsies. I think a more promising line is principal-agent conflict. A financial service paid for by stakeholders may be beneficial for the people who have the power to contract for it. Remember the old Dilbert cartoon, the one where the investment banker tells the evil little dog CEO "I can help you loot this place and escape"? (https://dilbert.com/search_results?terms=%22loot+this+place%22)
To be fair, that does not seem inconsistent with Fischer's analysis.
The contrast between claiming that human presence is a needed social situation to get the best educational results and :
Adam Ozimek: "By 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be remote, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates. Increased productivity and flexibility continue to be key benefits of remote work: Hiring managers cite reduction of non-essential meetings, increased schedule flexibility, and no commute as aspects of remote work that have worked better than expected…"
- should be emphasized. students need social interaction, but business personnel do not? Whatever happened to the "watercooler" meetings and Apple designing offices to enhance interactions?
I wonder whether in universities the need to socialize is more a perception of higher administration needing to see people doing their bidding, and professors needing appreciative live audiences, like [narcissistic] actors. Remember, a significant fraction of students are introverts who gain little from the unwanted social interaction of study groups and other forced interactions. Is this desire for seeing social interaction more extrovert control of the environment?
Re: "The past year has made me more and more certain that the in-person crowded university is an enormous key to a successful collective educational effort. "
Do you have any actual data to support this assertion?
"But we are those who can take squiggles on a page and from them spin-up an imago of the author’s mind and then discuss things and argue with it. We run that sub-Turing imago and instantiation in a separate sandbox on our own wetware, and so even when we are alone we are in a crowd of arguing voices. "
You may think that you have a good representation of another to argue with, but except for a very narrow domain, it is far more likely that your arguments are really random walks based on limited data. The actual person provides the needed feedback to keep a conversation on track. Arguing with a mental representation may have as much reality as a dream sequence.
Re: Wokeness as Old-Time American Religion: ‘Wokeness is much, much more than Critical Race Theory. ...especially the White people who numerically make up the bulk of the woke movement—that street ideology springs from a very old American tradition. It comes from the abolitionist movement, which itself was heavily influenced by Protestant Christianity…
Really? Wokeness is not just a US phenomenon, and white people in the US are also immigrants that had no connection to Christianity and abolitionist movements. In the uS, the fiercest adherents to Christianity represent the very antithesis of wokeness. I'm surprised that the usually smart Noah Smith seems so blind to the composition of the modern West.