How to be better at PR
Most of my experience with PR people involves them cluttering my inbox with unwanted pitches. But yesterday I had a PR experience that was so positive that I thought it was worth sharing. In an ideal...
View ArticleSome thoughts on the end of economic growth
Here are some thoughts on economic growth that aren’t yet coherent enough to be a Vox article… 1. Technological progress in a particular industry often has diminishing returns, and it’s possible to...
View ArticleFred Hirsch’s Social Limits to Growth
After my last post, reader Joe pointed out the parallels to Fred Hirsch’s classic book the Social Limits to Growth. I hadn’t read Hirsch’s book, but the similarity isn’t entirely a coincidence, since...
View ArticleThe Pokémon Go Economy, Explained without a Silly Headline
In a recent Vox post I tried to combine a headline designed to troll my least favorite website — “Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism” — with a serious policy argument....
View ArticleConventional wisdom says the Fed can’t boost growth any more. I don’t believe...
One of the big questions about the economy right now is whether monetary policy is a significant factor in the sluggish growth of the last five years. Lots of economists think that easy money was...
View ArticleWhat happens when we run out of investment opportunities?
Throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, the world had far more investment opportunities than we had capital available to invest. With the population growing, there was always demand to borrow money to...
View ArticleWhat Anne Marie Slaughter doesn’t get about scholarly independence
This past week Anne-Marie Slaughter, President of the New America Foundation, fired Barry Lynn. Lynn was the head of New America’s Open Markets project, which had become Washington’s leading center...
View ArticleOur constitutional system is broken and we should fix it
Today Congress is either going to pass a last-minute spending bill to keep the government open, or the government is going to shut down. Either way, the situation is an embarrassment. It has been many...
View ArticleThe case for narrow ideologies
I enjoyed a recent blog post by Jerry Taylor, president of the formerly libertarian Niskanen Center, on the case against ideology. Unsurprisingly, Taylor has gotten rebuttals from thoughtful...
View ArticleHere’s what the Fed just did, and why it was crucial
On Thursday, the Fed took a dramatic step to try to stabilize the financial system, offering banks trillions of dollars in new short-term loans. The loans would last for up to three months. Banks...
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