Conscience Warrior: 2015

Just a quick update:

With the fall in headline unemployment to 5.1% and the robust gains in monthly jobs numbers, many commentators are looking for the Federal Reserve to raise the target Fed Funds rate. This flies in the face, of course, of the other half of the Fed's dual mandate (stable prices), as headline inflation is still well below their alleged 2% target.

It is instructive, then, to look at other metrics. Below is a measure of unemployed persons per job opening. This, of course, does not include the marginally attached or those employed part-time for economic reasons.

This is very encouraging in and of itself, but anemic wage growth still indicates the time for tightening is a ways off.

12 September 2015

Links of the Week - 11 September 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

A dangerously misleading idea threatens to derail the American economy
Matthew Yglesias

What Ails the American Startup?
Evan Soltas

Artificial Unintelligence
Paul Krugman

Tech nerds are smart. But they can't seem to get their heads around politics.
David Roberts

The macro/micro validity tradeoff
Noah Smith

“A small cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand…”
David Warsh

A Fact about China's Crash
Evan Soltas

Labor market tightness
The FRED Blog

President McKinley's policies were garbage, and he doesn't deserve an awesome mountain
Matthew Yglesias

Hard Knocks: Playing Defense With TCU’s Gary Patterson
Chris Brown

05 September 2015

Links of the Week - 4 September 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

This study tried to improve our ability to predict major geopolitical events. It worked.
Zack Beauchamp

Pregnancy is painful, difficult, and dangerous. No one should be forced into it.
Amanda Taub

Donald Trump says the 'real' unemployment rate is 42%. He's really, really wrong.
Dan Diamond

The Voluntarism Fantasy
Mike Konczal

How does the NFL’s Roger Goodell stay in power? By acting like a dictator.
Michael C. Horowitz

The diversity of U.S. state economies
The FRED Blog

The Reactionary Soul

Paul Krugman

The Future of Macro

Ray Fair

A good use of moving averages
The FRED Blog

In landmark case, labor board will let more workers bargain with their employer’s employer
Lydia DePillis

29 August 2015

Links of the Week - 28 August 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Donald Trump is the perfect "moderate"
Ezra Klein

Donald Trump’s secret political weapon is his mastery of reality TV
Todd VanDerWerff

An Altogether Different Angle
David Warsh

A New Magnifier
David Warsh

The Scotchman Returns To The Model, Acuity Greatly Enhanced
David Warsh

Government employment in context
The FRED Blog

The Machine that Changed the World
David Warsh

Why Jimmy Carter is a great American leader
Jonathan Allen

I worked for the governor of Louisiana during Katrina. Here are 5 things I learned.
Robert Mann

The composition effect in the labor force participation rate
The FRED Blog

22 August 2015

Links of the Week - 21 August 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Discovering the Myth of the Lost Cause in Montgomery, Alabama
Mark Perry

When was the first traffic light installed? Today in 1914.
Joseph Stromberg

The case against voter ID laws, in one chart
German Lopez

The Tea Party finally has its very own presidential candidate: Donald Trump
Jonathan Allen

GDP Revisions
The FRED Blog

This California city just built the country's first protected intersection for bikes
Joseph Stromberg

This browser hack reveals the truth about “political correctness”
Amanda Taub

The real reason American public transportation is such a disaster
Joseph Stromberg

One image shows what cities would look like without cars

Ana Swanson

Rand Paul on what America’s been doing all wrong since 1835

Matt O'Brien

15 August 2015

Links of the Week - 14 August 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

A single image captures how the American house has changed over 400 years
Emily Badger

Freshwater’s Wrong Turn
Paul Krugman

Sarcasm and Science
Paul Krugman

Jamestown excavation unearths four bodies — and a mystery in a small box
Michael E. Ruane

The Problem with Some Subscription Services
Derek Guy

Donald Trump: Honesty Is for Chumps
Jack Shafer

Rewriting Turkish History to Fit the Ideology
Jonathan Wight

Is radical leftism a trap for minorities?
Noah Smith

We Don’t Really Care About Car Accidents
Kevin Klinkenberg

How to Fix Our Interstates
Reihan Salam

10 August 2015

Heritage = Hate, at least some of the time

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the dichotomy between 'heritage' and 'hate' in these discussions. Why exactly are these two ideas supposed to be mutually exclusive? I guess it's mainly because we've never really tried to reckon with slavery since the mid 1870s, and the effects of our collective head-in-the-sand explain pretty much all of the so-called 'problems with race' in the US since.

We've got dozens of Holocaust memorials and museums in the United States, which I think is a reflection both of the long history of Jewish culture in the US and of the role the US played in ending the Holocaust. On the other hand, we've got very few memorials to slaves, and virtually no museums to teach this important, painful, and essential part of our nation's history.

Germany has also got some Holocaust memorials and museums to help them sort out what that period means in their history. Eric Foner pointed out that if Germany had built a big bunch of memorials and museums to American slavery before they built any for the Holocaust, it might look as if they were trying to hide something.

08 August 2015

Links of the Week - 7 August 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

The Old Man and the CPI
Paul Krugman

Uber and the New Liberal Consensus
Paul Krugman

How school district boundaries are gerrymandered to keep poor kids segregated
Libby Nelson

The F story about the Great Inflation
Simon Wren-Lewis

The Moderate Republican's Case for Donald Trump
Bruce Bartlett

How conservative media helped the far-right take over the Republican Party
David Roberts

Gross Domestic Output, Explained
Matthew Yglesias

Hillary Clinton wants to take on "quarterly capitalism" — here's what that means
Matthew Yglesias

Jeb Bush now says he wouldn’t ‘phase out’ Medicare. What he would do is just as wrong.
Paul Waldman

Gold is doomed
Matt O'Brien

01 August 2015

Links of the Week - 31 July 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Here's Why the Huffington Post Is Wrong About Donald Trump
David Corn

If Guns Make Us Safer, Why Not Let Them Into the U.S. Capitol?
Josh Zeitz

There's a simple way to end gerrymandering. Too bad Congress made it illegal.
Matthew Yglesias

Free-market ideology and the burden of proof
Noah Smith

We don’t say “plane accident.” We shouldn’t say “car accident” either.
Joseph Stromberg

Dodd-Frank turns 5 today — it's Obama's most under-appreciated achievement
Mike Konczal

Pushing back on “quarterly capitalism” and incentivizing more investment
Jared Bernstein

Unlike Jeb Bush, John Kasich is trying something different
Paul Waldman

Finland is the poster child for why the euro doesn’t work
Matt O'Brien

Survey expectations - some more evidence

Noah Smith

25 July 2015

Links of the Week - 24 July 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Complacency and incrementalism are traps to avoid
Lawrence Summers

Deutsch(x)it
Cheap Talk

Woodford vs. the Neo-Fisherians
Noah Smith

The Hard Truths of Ta-Nehisi Coates
Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Nearly every job in America, mapped in incredible detail
Emily Badger

Greece should leave the eurozone
Timothy B. Lee

Iran nuclear deal: Conservatives have opposed every diplomatic breakthrough for decades
Matthew Yglesias

How corn made its way into just about everything we eat
Roberto A. Ferdman

Trumpism would be the perfect ideology for a third party
Matthew Yglesias

Scott Walker wants to drug test food stamp recipients. That shows why he’ll never be president.
Paul Waldman

18 July 2015

Links of the Week - 17 July 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

How the South Skews America
Michael Lind

How FDR Invented the Four Freedoms
Josh Zeitz

These maps show the vastly separate worlds of the rich and poor
Emily Badger

Jeb and the Nation of Takers
Paul Krugman

The South’s Heritage Is So Much More Than a Flag
Patterson Hood

The face of Greece’s defiance was a brash economist who pushed Greece to reject Europe
Ana Swanson

The End of the 2016 Election Is Closer Than You Think
Doug Sosnik

This is a great point about Iran's official anti-Americanism
Max Fisher

How World War III became possible
Max Fisher

How likely is nuclear war with Russia?
Max Fisher

11 July 2015

Links of the Week - 10 July 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

What This Cruel War Was Over
Ta-Nehisi Coates

This chart explains why Greece and Europe can't agree

Matthew Yglesias

The forgotten origins of Greece’s crisis will make you think twice about who’s to blame
Ana Swanson

George Takei to Clarence Thomas: The government can take our dignity. They did it to me.
Tez Clark

I’m a Black Southerner Who’s Seen Racism All My Life. Why Do I Stay Silent?
Isaac J. Bailey

3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake
Dylan Matthews

The untold story of how today’s fight over vaccines has its roots in the American Revolution
Carolyn Johnson

People on third base claiming they hit a triple, or marginal product theory at work…not!
Jared Bernstein

Corporate America beat back its best job trainers, and now it’s paying a price
Lydia DePillis

“Richmond Reoccupied by Men Who Wore the Gray”
Maurie McInnis

04 July 2015

Links of the Week - 3 July 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

What the Confederate flag really means to America today, according to a race historian
Roberto A. Ferdman

Measuring inflation expectations, part I
The FRED Blog

Here's One Confederate Flag That Shouldn't Be Taken Down
Gabrielle Canon

Measuring inflation expectations, part II
The FRED Blog

Take Down The Confederate Flag. Now.
Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy — and it always has
Libby Nelson

Save Alexander Hamilton!
Ron Chernow

Retire Hamilton, Jackson and All the Rest, Too
H. W. Brands

Ken Burns: Confederate flag isn't about heritage. It's about resistance to civil rights.
German Lopez

It Is Accomplished
Andrew Sullivan

29 June 2015

It's really hard to rank 'worst days,' Sen. Cruz edition

Sen. Cruz: "Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation's history," referring to the Supreme Court's dual rulings against a suit opposing healthcare expansion and against laws than forbid gay marriage.

I get it that people have different political opinions, and that to people like Sen. Cruz, marriages such as their own can only be valuable if other people cannot have them, and healthcare is only worth having if there is a class of people who cannot have that either.

That said, I'm having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the, uh, unique ideological requirements of the view that the Court's ruling against those opinions is of a piece with Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11, The Challenger and Columbia disasters, the San Francisco earthquake, the Galveston hurricane, the Dred Scott decision, and the assault on Fort Sumter. (Well, I guess I admit I can see how Sen. Cruz thinks these two rulings are worse than Dred Scott and Sumter.)

No, the part of Sen. Cruz's statement that is so baffling to this correspondent is that it's really hard to argue that, regardless of one's views, these two rulings marked even the worst 24-hour period in America this month. I guess it's possible that Sen. Cruz's views on whether or not universal healthcare and marriage are worse than racist terrorism are still not fully settled. I think for him to elucidate this further would be a public service.

27 June 2015

Links of the Week - 26 June 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Here's Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men
Kevin Drum

Why Are Libertarians Mostly Dudes?
Jeet Heer

Regulation and Arbitrage
Paul Krugman

Store of value
Noah Smith

FRED-MD: A Monthly Database for Macroeconomic Research
The FRED Blog

That Time the Middle East Exploded and Nixon Was Drunk
Tim Weiner

The deeper problems we miss when we attack ‘gentrification’
Emily Badger

Why the U.S. government needs to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill
Steven Mufson

Why savers need to stop whining and do something smart to make money
Matt O'Brien

A hilarious Australian stand-up comic explains what U.S. gun laws look like to the rest of the world
Jim Jefferies

20 June 2015

Links of the Week - 19 June 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Wall Street Is Using the Power of Dodd-Frank Against Itself
Adam Davidson

Why is it so hard to regulate the banks? It’s less the complexity than the political power.
Jared Bernstein

The Mutability of Wages
Paul Krugman

The real reason American passenger trains are so bad
Matthew Yglesias

Poor Judgment
Jamelle Bouie

Zimbabwe is paying people $5 for 175 quadrillion Zimbabwe dollars
Matt O'Brien

Why buying only the cable channels you watch probably wouldn't save you money
Timothy B. Lee

Iceland put bankers in jail rather than bailing them out — and it worked
Matthew Yglesias

Airlines Exploit The (Peter) Diamond Paradox?
Cheap Talk

Bitcoin isn’t the future of money — it’s either a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme
Matt O'Brien

19 June 2015

Violent Hate Crimes Involve Both Hatred and Violence

The photo below appeared recently on the Facebook page of a far-right group called "Young Americans for Liberty."

It features a quote attributed to actor Samuel L. Jackson:

I don't think it's about more gun control. I grew up in the south with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone. This [shooting] is about people who aren't taught the value of life.

This is a cute sentiment, but it presupposes that events such as the terrorist attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC cannot be about both too many guns and too little respect for life. After all, the U.S. hasn't got a monopoly on hate; plenty of other Western industrialized nations have as many problems with hate as we do, but do not have anything close to the problems with gun violence that we've got.

13 June 2015

Links of the Week - 12 June 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

You've met Hillarynomics. Now meet left-of-Hillarynomics.
Dylan Matthews

16 maps that Americans don't like to talk about
Max Fisher

US presidential elections used to be way more chaotic. This map shows all of them.
Phil Edwards

An Odd Couple
David Warsh

I'm a black ex-cop, and this is the real truth about race and policing
Redditt Hudson

Business Executives are NOT experts in Economics
Bill McBride

Does brand differentiation lower prices?
Matt Bruenig

Now we know what the Federal Reserve did to inequality
Yian Q. Mui

For the love of God, rich people, stop giving Harvard money
Dylan Matthews

Malcolm Gladwell mercilessly mocks John Paulson’s obscene $400 million gift to Harvard
Dylan Matthews

06 June 2015

Links of the Week - 5 June 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

President Obama on how Fox News teaches the middle class to demonize the poor
Emily Badger

Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them?
Joseph Stromberg

Fox News: We don't call the poor "leeches." Jon Stewart: Let me Google that for you!
Dara Lind

Blinkers and Lies
Paul Krugman

How America became the most powerful country on Earth, in 11 maps
Max Fisher

The Corporate Archipelago
Paul Krugman

The flat tax falls flat for good reasons
Jared Bernstein

Free-market dogma has jacked up our electricity bills
David Cay Johnston

The mean vs. the median of family income
The FRED Blog

If you laugh at this map, it means you're a huge map nerd
Max Fisher

30 May 2015

Links of the Week - 29 May 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

For the love of God, rich people, stop giving Ivy League colleges money
Dylan Matthews

If Obama and Clinton are "affirmative action" candidates, so are white men
Jenée Desmond-Harris

Why you should never, ever play the lottery
Matt O'Brien

The Mysteries of the Masons
Andrew Burt

Whatever you think of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama should get his fast track authority
Matthew Yglesias

The surprising economic principles behind car seats, email scams, and Japanese driving habits
Robert Frank

Why John Nash Matters
Benjamin Morris

Data Note: There’s a reason we here at OTE often focus on year-over-year changes
Jared Bernstein

The author of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ on the life and death of John Nash
Zachary Goldfarb

Fighting for History
Paul Krugman

23 May 2015

Links of the Week - 22 May 2015

A weekly collection of links from the Conscience Warrior Newsfeed

Labor force participation: Is a trend or a cycle at work?
The FRED Blog

Threats to Liberty
Dahlia Lithwick

Huckabee’s Welfare State Conservatism
Jamele Bouie

David Brooks Endorses Nepotism
Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Unless You Are Spock, Irrelevant Things Matter in Economic Behavior - NYTimes.com
Richard Thaler

A Note On Libertarian Anti-Paternalism
Matt Bruenig

Who's The Best Candidate?
Evan Soltas

In Praise of Linear Models…
Chris House

Jeb Bush embraces the narrative of Christian victimhood
Paul Waldman

Research: Natural Rate of Unemployment under 5% and Falling
Bill McBride

16 May 2015