The Balanced Budget Amendment

A Balanced Budget amendment is a great idea, an idea whose time has come.  Finally, as it is long past overdue!

A Balanced Budget amendment is an essential symbol of an economy that lives within its means, within the rules of fiscal integrity, fiscal responsibility.

But that is its biggest problem – isn’t it – that it is just a symbol of fiscal integrity and fiscal responsibility?

“OK, what’s the problem?  Why is it just a symbol of fiscal integrity and fiscal responsibility?  Why doesn’t it FIX the problem?”

The problem – I think we all agree – is an out of control National Debt.  And balanced budgets do not fix that problem.

“Whoa, really, why not?”

Wikipedia

I link to Wikipedia articles a lot in my Blog.  I don’t ever use it for my writing because my posts would be much wordier than they are and I prize brevity; and because the audience I am writing for is not so compulsively interested in learning all that there is to know about a subject – who has the time?  Not me!  But I do like to give my readers a place to go for more information about a subject that I write about, if they are interested.

But why Wikipedia?

Moral Hazard

“Moral Hazard” (for a longer discussion) was one of the most important – and necessary – factors that allowed the Great Recession of 2008 to occur.  Indeed, it may have compelled it to happen sooner or later.  So, maybe a sufficient factor, too.  For the mathematicians out there, moral hazard may have been a “necessary and sufficient” factor for the Great Recession of 2008, the Recession that was nearly the Second Great Depression.

So, what IS this thing called “moral hazard”?

Corporate … What?

It’s called “Corporate Personhood.”

“Corporate personhood” means that corporations are treated as though they were persons, indeed citizens, under the law, as having the same Constitutional Rights as “natural persons,” as citizens.

On the one hand it seems innocuous enough.  On the other hand it seems absurd – and dangerous.

The New Economy, Revisited

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  I forgot the main reason I sat down to write about "The New Economy."  The main reason is that the New Economy is a “structural change” in the economy, it is not just another down-swing of another “business cycle.”

Huh?  What you talkin’ about?

Many if not most economists are so wrapped up in Economic Theory that they see the recent Recession as just another recession, just another Bust following another Boom.  This strait jacket of Economic Theory forces them to see everything as business cycles and keeps them from seeing the obvious: that this recession – the jobless recovery part of it – is not the result of a cyclical Surplus in Supply or a Deficit in Demand (I capped these 4 words because they alliterate!), it is rather the result of a new economy that needs fewer and fewer workers.  I am not talking about Globalization or the out-sourcing of jobs to China and India, etc. which will continue to savage American jobs.  I am only talking about the Technology piece of the New Economy – computers and artificial intelligence and robotics – performing work that was previously performed only by human beings.