by Akiva Malamet, Bautista Vivanco, and Michael F. Cannon, Cato at Liberty, August 11, 2025. Excerpts: While Ozempic and other GLP‑1 drugs are great at helping patients lose weight(among many other promising uses), these impressive medications come with an impressive price tag. For those paying out of pocket, a month’s supply can cost around $1,000. Congress prohibits Medicare from…
Skier black flips while there’s an ongoing avalanche 🤯 pic.twitter.com/h4AQaM1lND — Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) December 23, 2024 How the Government Built the American Dream House The New Atlantis What Counts as Work? Plough Webb Telescope Spots Oldest Black Hole, Shattering Cosmic Records SciTech Daily Making Backpacks for Tiny Fish Nautilus COVID-19/Pandemics COVID Pandemic…
From the CPI release today: Figure 1: CPI all urban (bold blue), CPI – household furnishings and operations (tan), CPI – final demand, consumer durables (green), all in logs 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, author’s calculations. While m/m CPI headline growth was at consensus, q/q core was slightly above, so that the…
Most advanced countries are democracies. In most cases, these countries impose heavy taxes, with total revenues often falling between 30% and 50% of GDP. And yet, most people don’t like paying taxes. How can we explain this seeming contradiction? The mainstream view of both the economics profession and the general public seems to be that…
Archaeologists in Mexico Discover Long-Lost City Inhabited by Maya Rebels Who Resisted the Spanish Conquest Smithsonian (Chuck L) Exposure to some common Pfas changes gene activity, new study finds Guardian (resilc) Scientists may have found the tiny DNA switch that made us human ScienceDaily (Kevin W). Lordie. They can’t bring themselves to say “mutation” in…
The picture as of today’s releases, with IP, retail sales below consensus. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll from CES (bold blue), implied NFP Bloomberg consensus as of 7/1 (blue +), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$…
Now that we’ve looked at Musa al-Gharbi’s description of what causes Awokenings to rise and eventually fall, what are the long term consequences of these movements? Given that Awokenings consist of wealthy and elite members of the symbolic capitalist class rising in support of antiracism, feminism, economic equality, and other social justice related causes, it’s…
Part the First: AI and Deskilling in Healthcare. Yes, it does happen as described in the news article As AI spreads through health care, is the technology degrading providers’ skills? (New study suggests that, after having a specialized tool taken away, clinicians were less proficient at colonoscopies): The AI colonoscopy tool rolled out across four…
It’s really a statement on our times. Source; Kalshi, accessed 8/15/2025. As noted in an excellent article by Lauren Gurley in WaPo, these are some views of Dr. Antoni, two of which I was unaware of: Bureau of Labor Statistics data is ‘phony’ Social safety net programs are ‘Ponzi schemes’ Tariffs impact the import price…
I have for many years argued that Anne Krueger and Jagdish Bhagwati should be awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for their work on trade, protectionism, and economic development. Indeed, they should have shared the 2008 Nobel with Bhagwati’s student Paul Krugman. The extensive interview of Krueger in the latest issue of the Journal of…