Big Bad Scary Inflation III. Is It Temporary?
Since we are tackling one of the most discussed economic (and political!) issues of the day and how its re-emergence after many decades is scaring everyone, paying close attention to historical benchmarks is quite informative. We spent some time discussing the potential reasons for the low inflation in US for the last few decades: globalization, […]
Big Bad Scary Inflation II
In the first post in this series, I discussed the long-term low inflation that we have experienced here in US for the last few decades. This had sparked intense discussions as to why we did not see a rise in inflation, even under conditions that historically would be considered pro-inflationary. These include the boom times […]
Big Bad Scary Inflation I
Every channel you tune into these days, every newspaper you read, and every website you visit, there is one topic that is dominating the discussions: inflation! Even those with little interest in economics or politics are getting into the discussion. Why? We have had inflation in the past. As a matter of fact, the six […]
Setting the Stage for the 21st Century Dominance Part IV
So far in this series (Setting the Stage for the 21st Century Dominance,) we’ve focused on what makes for good national industrial policy and what can give a country an advantage in the international sphere. We’ve discussed how US became a superpower by betting big on science and technology in terms of its public sector […]
Setting the Stage for the 21st Century Dominance Part III
In the previous entry in this series, we discussed the long-term decline in US public sector R&D investments and how that trend does not bode well for the continued US pre-eminence as a world power in the decades and centuries to come. It’s worth spending some more time on this since it is now in […]
Setting the Stage for the 21st Century Dominance Part II
In the last blog post, we discussed the emerging competition between the established superpower, U.S., and the emerging superpower, China. Many are speculating that in the coming years China will become the largest economy in the world and consequently more influential than U.S. in geopolitics. I raised the point that if U.S. makes the kinds […]
Setting the Stage for the 21st Century Dominance Part I
As congress gets into the later stages of debate on whether to pass the Biden economic agenda, it is worth taking a pause and thinking about what’s at stake here. America is the world’s dominant super power and has been for quite some time. China is now a legitimate rival due to the total size […]
Evolution of US healthcare system: Part V
In our last installment of this series, I’d like to review some of the ongoing changes in our healthcare system and their potential impact on how healthcare is practiced in US. First, health insurance exchanges are meant to provide everyone an opportunity to have health insurance. On the surface, this might suggest increased costs […]
Evolution of US Healthcare System: Part IV
So, now you are the US government, the number of people in Medicare is increasing and they live longer and get better and more expensive treatments for their heart disease, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s and you have to pay for all of it. Economic growth is around 2-3% annually, which means the tax revenue coming in […]
Evolution of US Healthcare System: Part III
Well, it looks like big trouble for the governments who committed to providing healthcare to some or all of their population. After all, who could have predicted all of the expensive advances that would be made in diagnostics and therapeutics? How governments began to deal with this depended on how their population were insured. In […]