Statistics and econometrics alone are not science! They are tools that are a part of science. We need to do more than just find correlations, but also understand how things works. We should understand the cause and effect story, including the mechanisms that create the correlations.
An economist who has studied traits like executive functioning thinks it’s too late for Trump to have good executive functioning. He deeply criticized Trump, but also feared a left-wing socialist response.
There’s a problem in academia on the left and the right where people are reluctant to publish studies, or even work on studies, where the findings will be unpopular with their professional or social circle. Social scientists need to publish findings they think contribute to our knowledge on the topic, ignoring how it will make people feel.
Rent control has bad effects, but politically, when a city gentrifies, this can cause rents to raise so fast as to effectively be an eviction. Gentrification is good for creating flourishing urban areas, but it is unfair to the tenants already living there and could lead to political demands to stop the gentrification.
A rent control that slows the raising of rents, gives the current tenants more time until they can’t afford rent, and gives them more time to make more money, while allowing inflation-based rent raises and letting landlords charge market prices to new tenants…may be a net good.
Multi-year rent freezes that allow no rent increases are bad.
China hasn’t simply over invested in their property sector, their credit system is politically biased to invest in unproductive assets, their consumption seems hopelessly suppressed, making China dependent on exports, and all of their amazing new technology is not enough to overcome their malinvestment.
Trump’s trade wars on our allies, his threats to take territory from allies, and his threats to end Canada’s existence as an independent country…have caused the world to turn away from the US economically and diplomatically. Losing economic cooperation and trade that otherwise would have happened won’t single-handedly cause a US recession, but is hurting Americans economically and will continue to do so. We’d be better off without all of this bullshit. Hopefully future administrations can limit the extent that countries wire trade and cooperation away from the US.
Congresses and presidents give tax breaks for the wealthy and give the wealthy regulatory protection at the expense of everyone else because congress members and presidents are the wealthy. They are protecting themselves and people like them, screwing over everyone else.
Trump’s: attack on the Fed’s independence, forcing respected economic experts to push a bullshit political line, and generally incompetent economic comments and policies…are bad for the rule of law, the economy, and people in general. But, one factor that will determine how bad this is, is whether, after Trump, we see further degradation of the rule of law and more bad economic policies, or whether it gets better.
Canadians are pissed at the United States, not just its leader, for Trump’s aggressive, bellicose, and demeaning comments and goals regarding Canada. They are most insulted by Trump’s insults to Canada’s sovereignty and some say that trust in the US will not come back. They plan to boycott American goods, cancel US travel, and flipp US products on store shelves to notify others that these are products from an asshole country. They don’t just blame Trump, they blame the American people, who truly did cause this aggression toward Canada.
1/3 two 2/3s of the big inflation we had was caused by supply side issues, meaning Covid-caused problems with producing goods, services, and energy, rather than too much government spending. The other 1 or 2 thirds…was government spending–the Covid relief bills.
Some people talked about tariffs like they would single handedly crush the economy. That’s unfortunate because models showed that tariffs are bad for the economy in ways that hurt people, but aren’t usually significant enough to single-handedly crush the economy. This makes it easier for people to incorrectly deny the harms of tariffs in general, and the harms of the current and recent tariffs.