New paper looks at Indiana Covid vaccine effects. Six month gap between 11 & 12-yr-old eligibility gives us out natural experiment. Result: Large spillover among households, but not for schools.

Have housing prices returned to pre-covid levels? No. But Trump's graph is real. It only looks at the mean price for one developer, Lennar. National data still shows a stubbornly high plateau. Build more houses.

Everybody always gets this question wrong: How much does Kevin McAllister's Grocery Basket Cost Today? We need to adjust for quantity changes. It comes at $42.54. Median wages grew even more. It's the most affordable Home Alone yet. youtu.be/kOMKsIlXy_E?...

Many claim the latest inflation data have been faked, that there is selective missing data, private data doesn't confirm it, etc. While there are some measurement issues due to the shutdown, I think there's more signal than noise in this report. youtu.be/gCs80FMbk58?...

Is the data so bad the government cancelled it in October? No. Previous shutdowns were only "partial." Now we have November data. Trend is bad, but we're still floating. Policy changes can fix a lot of this. @geohussar.bsky.social

The world's largest container ships can't come to the America. We sees at most 16k container ships, the biggest are 24k! Thats 60%! Why? It was quite a puzzle. I went to the Port of LA, boated along side one, talked to experts, and found out it has something to do with Idaho! youtu.be/qFyYqUwXWLw

No Planet Money! Not the Fake Graph! You can't compare mean productivity to median wages. When we do compare mean to mean, the gap disappears. Real median wages are not stagnating either. We need accurate data to solve today's very real problems. @planetmoney.bsky.social

Tax funded anti-poverty programs predate both socialism & capitalism. Accompanied with modern markets, they've done wonders to alleviate suffering. But today, demographics and continued subsidies for the elderly threaten safety nets for the young and poor. youtu.be/P7Iq4c8V06A?...

Should the new poverty line be $140k? No. It's inaccurate math. It's inaccurate English. Michael Green seems to use a "comfortable living wage" source, and relabel it as "poverty." youtu.be/O84sYFh20Sw?...

Thanksgiving Dinner has never been more affordable. TDay dinner now takes the smallest share of our weekly median wages in the 40 yrs of Farm Bureau data. Produce is significantly more expensive though. Immigration crackdown is impededint even better news.

New video. Go watch. Are the economic degrowth scholars actually doing the "decent" standard of living they advocate for? Do they not have dryers, dishwashers, or TVs? This entire literature is a distraction from real environmental solutions. youtu.be/fNLbtWcHDZE?...

New Data! How's the economy? Unemployment ticks up to 4.4% in Sept. More current Unemployment Claims continue to slowly rise in Nov. Yet, inflation is slowly rising to 3.0% as of Sept. What will the Fed do?

God I bloody love economists. This one zeroes in on Rand Paul’s tweet complaining about the number of people on food stamps. And while he doesn’t touch on income inequity vs cost of living, he does explain the cost for SNAP now vs pre-pandemic.

Sen. Rand Paul claims food stamp spending doubled "an alarming trend." But this relies on 4 mistakes. 1. Graph can't replicate. 2. Need to adjust for Inflation 3. The economy is now bigger. 4. Share of Pop on Food Stamps Actually Declined. Conclusion: There is no trend.

Autopilot is drastically reducing accidents. data from Tesla, Waymo, Police Records, and Peer review research are now all showing it. Will eventually save global economy $1T in lower premiums alone.

Degrowth Economics can't work. Even Ecuador's consumption is too high. It requires a massive increase in poverty. Impossible to do in a democracy. We need massive green technology investments, which even have modest bipartisan support.

We've never seen mortgage lock-in like this before. We're talking 90% of mortgages! Some estimates say it caused 8% of the price increase due to the already tight housing market before 2022. What do you think? Is this enough to abandon the 30yr fixed?

I was asked why tariffs haven't crashed the economy. The answer: I never predicted they would in the first place. My videos from Jan & Apr both forecasted growth slowdown and modest price rises. And that's exactly what we've seen.

What will happen to the US economy if we ban skilled immigrants? A few domestic jobs will see higher wages, but overall native workers will not benefit. Offshoring increases. Economic dynamism & innovation will decrease. youtu.be/LUVNWphOuPc?...

The wealthy will always be criticized, yet their relative moral position can be improved by a greater recognition of their social responsibility. The history of Western Civilization teaches this. youtu.be/88NiaBmGp6M?...

Are monopolies destroying democracy? New paper says yes. Using idiosyncratic firm-level shocks to estimate a causal effect, the increase in markups can explain about a quarter of the global democracy decline. For the US, it's 42%.

Lisa Cook had communicated to her Credit Union that the second home in Georgia is a "vacation home." If reporting is true, this eliminates the governments case against her. It's further evidence of increased partisan regulation of our economy.

Firing Fed Governor without Due Process harms Fed Independence and sets a dangerous precedent for our checks and balances. The long term consequences will be more inflation.

Economist Stephen Moore claims BLS overestimated Biden job numbers by 1.5M. Unfortunately, he commits numerous errors. Over Biden's 4 yrs, the BLS initially underestimated jobs by 700k from the initial monthly estimate compare to the most recent benchmarks. youtu.be/PCqC94NORDw?...

This video just hit 100k views on YouTube! It was a lot of fun to make. I went to the Netherlands and the ports of Immingham and Grimsby in England. Trade is what makes us human. We've been conquering The North Sea for the past 10k years. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFwc...

Did the Fed cut interest rates in the Fall to help Harris win the election? No. 1) They did a further cut in Dec. 2) monetary policy has a 6-mo lag. 3) Sahm Rule triggered in Aug '24 4) Inflation pressure still elevated.

BLS preliminary estimates have actually increased their accuracy over time. There is always room for improvement and survey responses have decreased. Improved accuracy requires more resources, not less.

Data commissioner firing was motivated by bad news, rather than data quality concerns. 1)Trump already cut BLS budget. 2)Trump disbanded volunteer data advisory committee. 3)Private ADP data also show job growth decline. 4)No non-Trump employed economist has agreed with it. youtu.be/St78y6PABGU?...

We've solved the long standing European language family tree puzzle. Finnish does not originate in the Ural mountains, but rather much further East near Lake Baikal near Mongolia 4k yrs ago. Why did they move West? Long-distance trade brought about by the bronze revolution.

Johnny Harris doesn't understand Supply & Demand. He claims bird flu did not hurt supply enough to explain massive price hikes. But, if demand is very inelastic, the data match the model. I estimate a recent elasticity of 0.17; exactly in line with the research avg of 0.18. youtu.be/SRMpdq-ifDE?...

JD Vance claims low PPI inflation numbers mean economists don't understand tariffs? Is it true? No. PPI explicitly excluded imports. And the tariff-sensitive domestic goods, such as steel and furniture, are seeing price hikes.

Tariffs are starting to show up on inflation data. Effect is still rather muted. As prices go up in some industries (furniture), consumers pull back in others (airfair) causing those prices to fall. Monetary policy is keeping total demand in check.

Has inequality caused restaurants to struggle? After all, the rich only eat 3 meals a day. Yet, we see growth in new establishments. Worker pay is up. And we now spend more eating out than on groceries. Still, Keynes' insights about inequality leading to less MPC has some merit for recessions.

How does the data show Median Incomes rising faster than the Cost of Living, when housing is way less affordable? Answer: Other things have become relatively cheaper offsetting that. The prices of clothing, furniture, appliances, groceries, recreation have grown less than wages.

GenZ is making more money than the rest of us. Good. We still have a lot of inequality. Bad. Even Hayek cared about relative incomes. Good news: Wage growth for bottom 10% is catching up.

Americans are moving to more disaster prone areas. The greater financial opportunities in coastal areas appear to outweight the risks. But because of government disaster relief, this creates moral hazard. How should we address this? Increases property taxes? A personalized public FEMA premium?

Medicaid work requirements don't increase employment. They should be called "red tape requirements." Their implementation only cuts healthcare for hard-working low-income Americans. Also, the Bill's largest Medicaid cuts are just blanket funding cuts; nothing to do with working

Are Humans particularly violent? We don't initiate violence as much as chimps, but do we finish the job more often. Pre-agricultural violence was less frequent than previously thought. Farming's hierchies and scale brought a whole lot more violence. Recently, we've become more peaceful.

With rising inequality tearing apart the social fabric of America, what institutions will save us? Churches, post offices, libraries? No. You'll never guess.

NY has elected a socialist mayor before: LaGuardia! And he was a Republican. That said, government grocery stores won't fix food retail. Cuz food retail already has low competitive profits.

I've yet to met a hetero couple where the woman takes out the trash? Why? (The question appears so obvious that I'm not aware of any survey data that even asks the gendered difference).

The United States is nowhere near "full". Growth from native births is set to shrink behind deaths in about a decade. The U.S. population density is tiny. Many Midwestern cities' populations are smaller than 30 yrs ago. We have lots of room.

I woke up early to talk about the economic effects of tariffs w CNN International 1. UN projects tariffs may lose 7 million jobs. 2. The courts stroke down some tariffs, uncertainty continues. 3. Manufacturing jobs won't return. Higher paying jobs are already here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBVe...

The NBA and MLB also have over a quarter of players that are foreign born. Why not argue for Harvard to expand capacity rather than limit the country's acquisition of the global talent? "Migration and innovation have gone together since the dawn of human history." youtu.be/Sjdi2A6S6xw?...

Are tariffs working like the Trump administration has promised? “Not one bit,” according to @econchrisclarke.bsky.social. More on how the U.S.-China agreement affects your money and the lasting impact of tariffs at the link: open.substack.com/pub/chandeli...

Viral claim that minimum wage used to have the purchasing power of $66 an hour. Nope. It did max out at $11.27 in '68. Today, after looking at state and local MW, I calculate avg MW is now $11.73.

How does an economic good become "elite"? Why do Stradivarius 🎻 sell for millions when an equal quality modern sells for a fraction? Steinway 🎹 can't do it. What is so unique about the Strad? I explore it this quick video.

Hallmark is raising prices claiming tariffs. But they manufacture their cards in... Kansas. Greedflation, anyone? Turns out they manufacture their "keepsake ornaments" from overseas and have just been tight lipped about it.

U.S. Semi-Trucks should be bigger! I've been working hard on this for the past few months. It's my first time working with a team for video. I learned a whole ton and am excited to make more with them. It's a new video start up media company. Like, Subscribe, Comment. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpen...

Movie tariffs won't work. 1) Box Office is hurting due to tech/streaming, not foreign competition. 2) Foreign films improve art. Star Wars was inspired by Kurosawa. 3) Successful film industries have historically embraced free trade. Ex: S. Korea #trade #economy #economics #art #film #starwars