Download: PDF | EPUB Blair Fix and DT Cochrane Every billionaire is … a factory for producing policy failures at scale. — Cory Doctorow The planet has a billionaire problem. According to Oxfam, the world’s billionaires have more combined wealth than the bottom 60% of humanity — some 4.6 billion people. Given this obscene situation, calls are growing to rid the world of the billionaire class. But how do we make that happen?

And with that, my postdoc is done. Backing up a bit, for the last two years I’ve had a wonderful research position at York University supervised by political economist Jonathan Nitzan. It was the rare kind of postdoc that allowed me to work on my own research. (What I did with my time? Look at the last two years of writing on this blog!) Anyway, the job’s been a blast, but the position is over at the end of the month. So what comes next?

Download: PDF | EPUB In the last few months, there have been a string of open letters from tech leaders warning that artificial intelligence could lead to a ‘profound change in the history of life on Earth’. According to some insiders, AI poses an extinction risk, on the same level as pandemics and nuclear war. I think this scaremongering is nonsense. It plays into popular science fiction tropes about machines conquering humanity.

Download: PDF | EPUB There’s nothing like waking up to a boatload of Twitter scorn. It’s refreshing, in a masochistic sort of way. Some backstory. After most of my blog posts, I put the charts on Twitter, usually with a provocative caption.

Download: PDF | EPUB I still remember when I first encountered Cory Doctorow’s writing. After an internet rabbit hole, I landed on his post ‘Ford patents plutocratic lane-changes’. Man, it made me laugh. Here was a sci-fi writer describing a (real) Ford patent that would monetize the right to change lanes. Is Ford paving the way to a plutocratic hell?

Download: PDF | EPUB In my last post, I discussed the underwhelming relation between interest rates and unemployment. In this post, I’ll look at a better way to connect unemployment to interest income. It turns out that if you take US net interest and divide it by corporate profit, you get a ratio that closely tracks unemployment.

Download: PDF | EPUB For the last few months, I’ve been studying the distributional effects of interest-rate hikes. There’s been no shortage of surprising results. In this post, I’ll discuss an effect that is surprising because it’s underwhelming. Many economist claim that when interest rates rise, unemployment will increase. The idea is that higher rates make businesses tighten their belts, leading to less hiring and greater unemployment.

Download: PDF | EPUB [I]nterest rates are, first and foremost, a distributional variable that affects the income shares of various social groups. — Louis-Philippe Rochon & Mark Setterfield (2007) When I read about monetary policy, I have a rule of thumb. Every time I see the phrase interest rate , I replace it with the term wage rate . Then I ask myself whether the discussion still makes sense. Often, it does not.

Download: PDF | EPUB I’ve been writing about inflation for the better part of three months. It’s been exhausting. Most of my time has been spent debunking misconceptions promoted by mainstream economists. Fortunately, I’m ready to move on. What’s interesting about inflation is not the fact that prices rise.

Download: PDF | EPUB To manage inflation, governments have a simple tool at their disposal: raise wages as fast as possible. — Milton Fryman For the last few months, I’ve been diving into the economics of inflation. In this post, I’m excited to review some forgotten history. Our journey starts with a basic question: what is the key policy tool for managing the rate of inflation?

Download: PDF | EPUB If you’re just tuning in, I’ve spent the last few months debunking some common misconceptions about inflation: Is inflation a uniform increase in prices? No. Inflation is wildly differential. Is inflation driven by an ‘over-heated’ economy? No. Inflation tends to come with economic stagnation.