Economists (of which I am one) are cheering about recent economic measures for our nation. Inflation rates are falling without the high levels of unemployment expected to produce disinflation. Real wages have risen. Hard-to-employ groups are finding jobs as employers drop prior credential requirements. Indeed, the soft landing the US Federal Reserve Bank is shooting for may be achievable (underscore “may,” as so much uncertainty remains). So why does most of the nation (7 in 10 according to a March 2023 CNN poll) believe the economy is still bad? One hypothesis is that people are upset because, although the inflation rate is falling, prices remain significantly higher. They feel they need to spend a larger percentage of their income on meeting their needs. Yes, prices are up. And, higher prices make them worse off. But incomes are also rising. If incomes increase more…
Five mistakes in Twitter’s new brand name and symbol
Branding is a strategy for differentiation and growth. So too, is changing a brand name. Elon Musk’s Twitter has plenty of problems that require new strategies. It finally has a powerful competitor of size in Meta’s Threads. It lost nearly 60% of its ad revenue last year. The platform has regular bugs that hurt users’ experiences. And Musk reduced oversight of hateful and pornographic posts, leading brands to fear reputational damage and reduce ad spending on the platform. Musk’s goal for Twitter is ambitious. He wants it to be a single platform for all things online. For example, as one of the founders of PayPal’s predecessors, it’s not surprising he wants to add a payments business on Twitter to reduce reliance on ad dollars. He wants open and unconstrained communication among users, with users calling out and limiting the behavior of bad actors….
Bidenomics vs Trickle Down – It Depends
US President Joe Biden and his team are traveling the country spouting the success of his economic policies. The package is called “Bidenomics.” It’s best understood as a contrast (which I’ll get to shortly) to traditional GOP economic policy recommendations. The latter argues for lower taxes, less government regulation, and minimizing social welfare spending. The fear underlying GOP dismissal of Bidenomics is that we will become a “socialist” nation. Think of Scandinavian nations with high taxes and high social spending. (The fact that these nations do not engage in socialism – a system where the government owns the means of production, distribution, and exchange – is beside the point. But discussing that would be a digression here.) The GOP policy prescription is based on core assumptions such as: The private sector can spend money more efficiently than the government. Low taxes on corporations…
Healthcare Needs a “Me Too” Movement
Some things should never happen in healthcare, like operating on the wrong place or providing the wrong medication or dosage. But such things happen, sadly. In a study of one insurer’s malpractice claims stemming from 68 wrong-site surgery claims between 2013-2020, 46% of patients required a second surgery, 10% experienced mobility dysfunction, and 9% had a worsened injury. Even worse, 15% died or totally lost function, about equally split. These mistakes should never have occurred. Since 2004, The Joint Commission (which accredits US healthcare organizations) has mandated a Universal Protocol for surgery. The protocol requires a pre-incision verification process, the surgeon marking the incision site on the body, and a surgical team time-out immediately before the incision so that any team member can stop the surgery. Yet between 2018 and 2022, The Joint Commission received 525 reports of wrong surgery. It’s a likely…
Effective policy demands flexibility that politicians lack
Our two political parties each champion a set of recommended economic policies. For the GOP, tax cuts are always helpful. For the Democrats, not so much—but government spending can solve a lot of problems. As an economist, the rigidity of political views – not just among the politicians but their distinct tribes of voters – dismays me. Why? Because different contexts demand different solutions. In early 2009, Captain Sullenberger went against traditional thinking when he safely landed an Airbus A320 on the Hudson Bay after it hit a flock of birds, cutting off all engine power. He didn’t follow standard procedures because he and co-pilot, Jeffrey Skiles, recognized the uniqueness of the situation. An economy is a far more complex system than a plane and its interaction with air. With any complex system, physics proves that starting conditions matter for what you do…