Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit

For reasons that have long mystified me, most economists are only comfortable with the social welfare function W=f(per capita GDP). That is, economic growth is "good" but only dirty hippies concern themselves with the distributional impacts.

We need policies to fix this
, and politicians who understand it. And the fix isn't "everybody get a STEM degree!"
For all but the most highly educated and affluent Americans, incomes have stagnated, or worse, for more than a decade. The census report found that median household income, adjusted for inflation, was $51,017 in 2012, down about 9 percent from an inflation-adjusted peak of $56,080 in 1999, mostly as a result of the longest and most damaging recession since the Depression. Most people have had no gains since the economy hit bottom in 2009.