Economic Ideas

July 27, 2014

Three "Tear-Water" Graphs

The U.S. has had an economic recovery from the Great Recession with sluggish GDP growth, a worrisome output gap and slowly diminishing unemployment.

July 20, 2014

Chart of the Week: The Rare Disease Spending Dilemma

Our Sunday Chart of the Week Since our chart looks at Medicaid spending on rare diseases, we better start with Medicaid. It is complicated. Yes, Medicaid […]

July 17, 2014

John Stuart Mill on Affordable Health Care

A child prodigy, 19th century economist John Stuart Mill said in his Autobiography that, “I have no remembrance of the time when I began Greek; I […]

July 16, 2014

John Maynard Keynes and the Generational Impact of Entitlements

Before seeing how we are benefiting unequally from entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, let’s start with some history. During 1934, with unemployment high and production low, […]

July 14, 2014

Adam Smith and Traffic Lights

Located 30 miles from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the island of Nantucket has no traffic lights. Instead, drivers respond to stop signs, rotaries, and courtesy. More often […]

July 13, 2014

Chart of the Week: To Which Job Will Your College Major Take You?

Our Sunday chart of the week Just some human capital facts today… Showing the proportion of people from a college major that go to a certain […]