I barely know anything about economics, but China's population is over 4 times USA's. China also manufactures an insane amount of products and sells it globally. I feel like most stuff I own at home is made in China.
Essentially, what are some of the metrics by which economists would decide whether a market has too much concentration or oligopsony power, particularly labour markets where it is harder to determine the exact number of sellers?
What if businesses and corporations all payed the same salary from the CEO down to the janitor?
You will still have the drive to innovate, because your salary is directly tied to the company.
Wealth inequality would seriously take a hit as well.
I’m no economist by any stretch of the imagination, so I’d be grateful if you could explain this to me in plain language.
For some time now, I’ve been seeing in the news how European countries have been stuck in a state of complete economic stagnation for years; countries such as the UK, France, Spain and Italy are failing to grow, create more jobs and pay competitive wages to their workers, with Germany now joining them in this situation, as well as Japan in Asia and New Zealand in Oceania. If we compare this with the United States, it is quite the opposite: they continue to grow economically, their jobs pay very good and competitive wages, and their citizens have not seen their standard of living reduced despite the many crises and conflicts we are currently experiencing, unlike in Europe. The exceptions to the rule here are probably countries such as Poland, the Nordic nations, Switzerland and microstates like Luxembourg or Monaco; the rest of the major economies are facing a host of problems, as I mentioned some time ago.
So why does this phenomenon occur? Does it have anything to do with regulations and taxes, as many liberal economists point out regarding Europe? What is the secret of the United States?
Or is it necessarily the case that in order for 1st world populations to live such relatively luxurious lifestyles, there needs to be poor populations producing cheap goods, given current technological constraints?
Here is the discussion.
https://x.com/jt\_kerwin/status/2056982493610545314
In care you do not want to visit X, here is what the tweet says. The poster is Jason Kerwin, an economist at University of Washington.
He first says:
There are a number of important economics citations out there that do not exist. As in, people cite them, it is standard to cite them, referees may ask you to cite them, and the underlying paper does not exist anywhere and never has.
(And no, I will not name names!)
He then follow up with this:
How is this possible? In econ we cite working papers, not just publications. Sometimes things are presented but never actually posted. People finds a way to credibly cite a “paper” written by someone famous—>others copy them—>citogenesis,
He then concludes his thread with this:
The applied econ department at Minnesota had an amazing now-retired former librarian, Linda Eells, who could dig up any paper that actually existed. I sicced her on some of these and. When she says that nothing exists, I believe her.
Cant we apply the same principles?
I'm an economics novice. Maybe even that's generous, i know absolutely nothing whatsoever about how money works or how the economy works. In the US, the shape of our economic model is a constant topic of debate, and while I do definitely need a good primer on that, I suppose I want to ask directly about this specific "tax the rich" thing. Obviously, every American who earns an income is taxed, to varying degrees. America is viewed as the epitome of capitalism, however it's not as though there are no socialist policies or programs (or are they even socialist?), such as public schooling, SNAP/EBT benefits, public roads, libraries, fountains, parks, etc. We believe in water as a basic human right, which apparently is up for debate now and some people in positions to change this think otherwise, but we do have some services and whatnot that we socialize. But there're broad debates about whether we should be doing more with our taxes toward healthcare, Universal basic income, university, etc. What I want to know is, the portion of this debate that centers around the rate at which billionaires are taxed, it supposedly would cap the economy quite a bit if we taxed them more, and they'd be less willing to create jobs, innovations, advancements, and opportunity in America than if we leave them be, I don't really know what's right or wrong.
Is there a way to tax them at a higher right, or everyone, without incurring a huge hit to the livablity of American wages (which is already pretty weak right now according to many). I'm at a point where I have a hard time both believing that it's fair or okay for billionaires to pay a very small proportion of what they effectively earn in taxes just due to technicalities pertaining to loans, investments, assets, etc but also have a hard time believing the idea that if they were just taxed more and we used more tax money on social services that the economy would do just fine growth wise. But again, I don't know enough to know which one makes more sense
In macroeconomics, we have a 4-sector model (households, firms, government, foreign sector). If humans started trading with aliens, would that still fall under the “foreign sector,” or would economists consider it a new 5th sector?
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/the-cost-of-thriving-index-OC.pdf
I'm not an economist, so I've only recently discovered this work by Oren Cass (never heard of him either). However, it seems to confirm that throughout the years, the affordability of the things an average middle class family owns and consumes has actually fallen down massively from 1985 up to 2020. That could be the reason why people seemingly struggle more and more to provide for their families (or at least this work claims so).
Are there any known criticisms of this index I'm not aware of? Or does it really measure quality of living and affordability well? What are your thoughts on this?
So, recently i've gotten into learning about economics and started to read some books the first of which was The Worldy Philosophers by Heilbroner. This was a good read but it focused more on the historical context behind their reasoning rather then detail on their actual economic thought. I have been recommended other books such as Economics in one lesson, Road to serfdom by Hayek, and Basic economics by Thomas Sowell. But, I have been informed that all of these books are written by economists of the Austrian school of thought and as such I was wondering if anyone could give me book recommendations that are easy enough for beginner to follow along of other schools of thought outside of Austrian as I want a greater variety of perspectives.
I'm reading "Fragile by Design" by Calomiris and Haber. I'm only partway through the book, and in the early chapters they argue that small unit banks create economic systems that are under-banked and slow economic development. They say that unit banks cannot effectively spread risk over geographic areas and business sectors. They cannot achieve scales of economy. In short, they are deeply problematic.
On the other hand, in the 2008 global financial crisis, one thing I heard quite a bit was that bank bailouts were necessary because the banks were too big to fail. Economists and public policy people seemed to widely agree that Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs were all too big to fail, and that the damage of the 2008 crisis would have been even worse if bank bailouts hadn't occurred.
I imagine that the answer is that banks should be "somewhere in-between" but what does that mean in a quantitative way? What is the "right size" for a bank? Can that be quantitatively calculated or in some other way well-defined?
If it matters, I'm a physics person so I can handle (probably would even prefer) a mathematically rigorous model.
I am looking for an economic comparison between two distinct land tenure and municipal funding models:
1 - The Western/U.S. Model: Fee simple title coupled with perpetual property taxation. Local governments rely on recurring property taxes to fund public services and infrastructure, using foreclosure as the ultimate enforcement mechanism for non-payment.
2 - The East Asian/Chinese Model: State ownership of land with time-limited residential land-use rights (typically 70 years). Local governments generate significant upfront revenue via land-use renewals or sales, rather than relying heavily on annual property taxes.
From a macroeconomic and public finance perspective, how do these two models alter long-term capital investment incentives for property maintenance and development as a lease nears its expiration?
Also, which system is more efficient at capturing unearned land value appreciation (land value capture) for public use?
And
How do these models impact housing affordability, market volatility, and the fiscal stability of local governments over multi-decade horizons?
Looking for insights grounded in public economics, urban economics, or relevant empirical studies.
The common sentiment is that Korea is the only country to have gone from least-developed status to developed. It is a huge part of South Korea's national identity and a source of pride.
However I'm not certain if this is a 100% true sentiment. Compared to other Asian countries at the time, like Thailand, Korea seems to be doing relatively okay, even with the destruction of the Korean War.
Basically, what position was South Korea's economy in during the late 1940s and 1950s? Is it surprising that it managed to turn its fortunes around and see economic success, or was that somewhat predetermined?
I’ve been wondering about how big these technology companies have gotten and we all know just how important they are to the economy. But recently I find it baffling just how big Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta really are. All in the trillions of dollars of market cap.
It’s amazing to me that some these other companies that I would consider extremely important to the economy are so much smaller on a market cap basis. For example at the time of this writing, GM is at $65b, Ford is $52b, all of the airlines are between $5 - $10b, many consumer defensive are significantly smaller like Colgate at $72b, General Mills at $18b, even most finance companies are 1/10th size of the largest mag7 company.
I understand in economics that capital and human capital will then flow to the most economical productive space (ie these tech companies) but has there ever been an analysis done on what we’ve “lost” but not having some of the greatest minds contribute to innovation in cars, airplanes, even physical goods like consumer defensive? I can understand that there isn’t much “juice left to squeeze” from an innovation perspective in these non-tech companies but I can’t help but wonder what we’ve lost by having so many engineers go work at Google and try to make me click more on this ad.
China has had a series of court rulings saying that companies could not lay off workers and then replace them with AI.
>“The development of artificial intelligence technology should be applied to liberating labor, promoting employment and improving people’s livelihood. Labor law allows employers to undertake technological changes and upgrade their operations, but it should also take into account the protection of workers’ legitimate rights and interests."
Do economists think that is a good idea or a bad idea?
Let's say all jobs would have continuing employee's wages adjusted for inflation every year, what would happen? I.e. if an employee makes 50k per year and inflation is 1%, if the employee remains at that company, their wage would then be 50k +1% thus being at least 50,500 the following year but new employees could start at 50k instead of 50,500. The reason im asking is because my current job has a lower raise than inflation which is part of why its a temporary job for me.
Which is much lower than in those countries countries mentioned above ?
All have higher GDP per capita than Vietnam , Vietnam GPD per capita only around 450 USD / per person per months
sorry if this is too wild a question-the motivation is partly that many countries are expected to eventually go into demographic decline due to fertility rates, but Africa is an exception, so the question is meant to illuminate a possible situation at some future time