Yesterday, I ran across a new paper from economist Robert Gordon that suggests that long-term innovation and technological development may be slowing, at least in the case of breakthrough technologies. I found Gordon’s paper interesting, and would like to use today’s post to discuss it and its possible future implications.
Continue reading “The Demise of the Scientific Breakthrough?”
Today I’d like to take a mental trip back across the pond and examine the current double dip recession in the United Kingdom, investigating the role it plays as a case study in the policy debate between advocates of stimulus (state spending increases) and advocates of austerity (state spending decreases).
Sneaking up on the US government, slowly but surely, is the fiscal cliff–the agreement congress made to cut spending across the board in many sensitive areas if a bipartisan deficit reduction plan could not be agreed to. This was a bad idea from the outset, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the Democratic Party, and that’s both a problem, and the topic of today’s post.
I keep seeing a certain political sentiment expressed. It goes a little something like this, from James Pethokoukis of the New York Post:
So what’s the problem with the Obama recovery? Why is it the weakest since the Great Depression?
Maybe it’s the Obama policies, like a stunning disregard for the trillion-dollar deficits that are likely already a dead weight on growth. Or maybe it’s the Obama guarantee of more tax hikes and regulation that makes US business too worried to hire and invest.
But it’s not too late to start shrinking unproductive government, cut debt and reduce penalties on work and investment — just like in those recoveries that we used to know.
Then there are the political cartoons, things like this:
Here’s the structure of the idea:
The first point is correct, the other two points are simplistic and anti-intellectual, and I intend to illustrate both how and why.
Background: recently, pizza shop CEO John Schnatter decided to raise his pizza prices by up to 20 cents giving this reason:
If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders’ best interests.
In other words, the provision in the recent health reforms that private enterprises with in excess of 50 full time employees provide health insurance or pay a penalty has convinced Schnatter that he must raise his pizza prices in order to maintain present profit margins. Today I’d like to investigate whether or not the Affordable Care Act should be opposed on this basis.
Benjamin Studebaker 