Waiting For the equipment delivery.
Between 12:00 and 14:00.
Mother will be returned about an hour later.
Then a Tuck in visit from the hospice nurse.
Ann is making dinner. Jim gets in about 10:00.
I can ship her to a residential facility when she becomes unresponsive.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/14/interest-rates-and-the-budget-outlook/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/rising-sun/
Rising Sun
Joe Romm
draws our attention to the third slice of the latest IPCC report on
climate change, on the costs of mitigation; the panel finds that these
costs aren’t that big — a few percent of GDP even by the end of the
century, which means only a trivial hit to the growth rate.
At one level this shouldn’t be considered
news. It has been apparent for quite a while that given the right
incentives we could maintain economic growth even while greatly reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. But there is, in fact, some news that greatly
strengthens the case that saving the planet would be quite cheap.
First, a word about the general principle
here. Actually, for once I get to play “balanced” journalist, and bash
both left and right. For there are some people on the left who keep
insisting that economic growth is incompatible with reduced emissions,
and that therefore we have to turn our backs on growth. Such people have
no power, and therefore don’t do any real harm. Still, it’s worth
pointing out that they have a much too narrow notion of what it means to
have a growing economy. It doesn’t necessarily mean more stuff! It
could be better stuff, or more services — and there are also choices to
be made in how we produce and distribute stuff. There is absolutely no
reason to believe in a one-for-one link between real GDP and greenhouse
gases.
As a practical matter, the fallacies of the
right are much more important — indeed, they may destroy civilization.
What’s notable about right-wing commentary on the economics of emission
reduction is how people on that side suddenly seem to change their views
about the effectiveness of markets. Normally they extol the magic of
the marketplace, which can brush aside all limits; but somehow they
simultaneously believe that markets would be totally unable to cope with
a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. Scarce resources are no
problem; limited rights to pollute are catastrophic. It’s not hard to
see the ulterior motives here, but it’s still peculiar.
In fact, you should be optimistic about the
ability of a market economy to reduce emissions given the incentives.
And now we know something new: the technological prospects for a
low-emission economy have gotten dramatically better.
It’s kind of odd how little attention the media give to the solar revolution, but this is really huge stuff:
In fact, it’s possible that solar will
displace coal even without special incentives. But we can’t count on
that. What we do know is that it’s no longer remotely true that we need
to keep burning coal to satisfy electricity demand. The way is open to a
drastic reduction in emissions, at not very high cost.
And that should make us optimistic about the
future, right? I mean, all that stands in our way is prejudice,
ignorance, and vested interests. Oh, wait."
The storage problem must be added to this.
Solar power does not match the the electric load curve.
Amonia (NH4OH) would hold the energy.
Electrolysis of water is better understood. H2 can be nasty.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/supply-demand-and-unemployment-benefits/
Supply, Demand, and Unemployment Benefits
Ben Casselman
points out that we’ve had a sort of natural experiment in the alleged
effects of unemployment benefits in reducing employment. Extended
benefits were cancelled at the beginning of this year; have the
long-term unemployed shown any tendency to find jobs faster? And the
answer is no.
Let me parse this a bit more, and ask, how
was it, exactly, that reduced benefits were supposed to encourage
employment in the first place?
Making the unemployed miserable arguably
increases labor supply, as workers become less choosy and more willing
to take whatever job they can find. But the US labor market in 2014
isn’t constrained by supply, it’s constrained by demand: given what
firms can sell, they have no need for as many hours of work as workers
are willing to give.
So make the long-term unemployed more
desperate; so what? They can’t do anything to increase the amount of
work demanded, and in fact their reduced purchasing power reduces labor
demand.
You might imagine that the long-term
unemployed, through their desperation, might take jobs away from
existing workers — but it’s not easy to see how that might work, and
there’s no evidence that this is happening.
So the point is that as long as you
understood that we have a demand-constrained economy, you knew that
cutting off the unemployed would produce all pain, no gain. And your
prediction was right.
Oh, and this constitutes another source of evidence that the “regular economics”
extolled by Barro and others — that is, economics in which unemployment
benefits must reduce employment because they’re “paying people not to
work” — is just wrong in a depressed economy."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/blaming-the-messengers-euro-edition/
Blaming the Messengers, Euro Edition
Aha. I missed this, from Jürgen Stark, which is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen written by a former central banker:
It is likely we are living in an extended period of price stability. This is good news. It boosts real disposable income and will eventually support private consumption. Inflation expectations are well anchored, and there is no evidence households and companies are delaying purchases because of negative expectations. Warnings about outright deflation and calls for ECB action are misguided and irresponsible. The longer this discussion continues, and the more intense it becomes, the more likely the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, Stark begins by asserting that low
inflation boosts real disposable income. That’s a zero-credit answer on
any undergraduate exam: yes, low inflation makes income gains higher for
any given rate of increase in nominal income, but low inflation reduces
the rate of nominal income growth one for one. The notion that an
influential former monetary official doesn’t understand this is
breathtaking.
Now, it’s not true that low inflation has no
effect; it increases the real value of debt, which is contractionary
because debtors cut spending more than creditors raise it, and it raises
real interest rates when nominal rates are near the zero lower bound.
But these are both demand-depressing effects.
Oh, and low overall European inflation makes
the adjustment problem of debtor countries much worse, which Stark
doesn’t even mention.
But the real kicker is the claim that even
talking about the possibility of deflation is irresponsible, because
that can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s right: if
inadequate ECB action leads Europe into a Japan-style lost decade or
two, it’s the fault of all those critics who warned that this might
happen; if only everyone had kept clapping, everything would have been
OK.
I can understand why some policymakers would
like to live in a world like that — a world in which, if critics say
that their policies will fail, and then they do fail, it’s the critics’
fault. But it’s hard to imagine the state of mind of someone who would
actually state that view in the FT."
I don't outguess Wall Street.
Sometimes I can think.
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