Daily Economy
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Czarist America Looks to Conquer Crypto
Get ready, crypto community, because the czars are coming for you! On Monday, June 4, the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Valerie Szczepanik to a new position: “associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance and senior advisor for digital assets and innovation,” known informally as the “crypto czar.”
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A Completely Unnecessary Trade War
We’ve got a genuine problem, a new crop of world leaders who are willing to sacrifice economic rationality, international cooperation, and world peace to feed their nationalistic political ambitions via the brute force of protectionism. Trump is leading the way.
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The Limits of Presidential Self Criticism
In so many areas, Obama seemed like an intelligent and thoughtful person, certainly someone who wanted to achieve some good. But even from his earliest extended interviews – however erudite and insightful – it was clear that he had a gigantic blind spot about fundamental economic topics. Most foundationally, the topic of wealth creation was…
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What Minimum-Wage Advocates Ignore
Politicians often turn to minimum-wage hikes when pressed by constituents to “do something” about poverty. They turn a blind eye to the fact recipients tend not to be from poor households, as British Columbia’s case shows.
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Jobs Growth Is Rebounding and Hourly Earnings Growth Is Accelerating
Payrolls in the United States rose by 223,000 in May, solidly beating an expected rise of 188,000. Gains in the labor market have accelerated recently, reducing fears of a pending slowdown, yet the increases remain modest by historical comparison, suggesting that the slower and somewhat steadier gains of the current cycle may help prolong the…
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Smart Contracts Don’t Leave Humans Out of the Picture
Blockchain enthusiasts often focus on the potential for smart contracts to replace biased and fallible humans with cut-and-dry computer code. But this emphasis on code over humans can confuse both the definition and true potential of smart contacts.
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What Cities Need to Accommodate the Delivery Economy
Polls have found that consumers in many countries have come to expect only a two-to-three-day wait for an order to arrive. Cities and states stand to gain if they get the rules that constrain warehouse development and street space right.
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Car-Sharing App Shows Why Peer-to-Peer Is Unstoppable
Incumbents are so scared that they spent over $1.4 million in 2017 alone on lobbying for bills to restrict the operation of car-sharing startups or to impose the same laws and taxes applied to car-rental companies. However, Turo’s path to success shows that innovation in the industry was long overdue.
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A Hilarious Comedy about Ghastly Evil
The film brilliantly shows the wild jockeying for power that follows Stalin’s death, with fantastic portrayals of all the important figures from this period: Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrently Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrey Andreyev, Georgy Zhukov. It also serves as an excellent guide to what actually happened in those strange months that led to Beria’s execution and…
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The Threat to Bitcoin from Quantum Computing
This week, it was my pleasure to sit on a panel with Gavin Brennen of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a physicist and one of the world experts on this topic. He presented a very nice paper that examined this question in some detail. He began with his frustration over the headlines that swept the…
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Czarist America Looks to Conquer Crypto
Get ready, crypto community, because the czars are coming for you! On Monday, June 4, the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Valerie Szczepanik to a new position: “associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance and senior advisor for digital assets and innovation,” known informally as the “crypto czar.”
-
•
A Completely Unnecessary Trade War
We’ve got a genuine problem, a new crop of world leaders who are willing to sacrifice economic rationality, international cooperation, and world peace to feed their nationalistic political ambitions via the brute force of protectionism. Trump is leading the way.
-
•
The Limits of Presidential Self Criticism
In so many areas, Obama seemed like an intelligent and thoughtful person, certainly someone who wanted to achieve some good. But even from his earliest extended interviews – however erudite and insightful – it was clear that he had a gigantic blind spot about fundamental economic topics. Most foundationally, the topic of wealth creation was…
-
•
What Minimum-Wage Advocates Ignore
Politicians often turn to minimum-wage hikes when pressed by constituents to “do something” about poverty. They turn a blind eye to the fact recipients tend not to be from poor households, as British Columbia’s case shows.
-
•
Jobs Growth Is Rebounding and Hourly Earnings Growth Is Accelerating
Payrolls in the United States rose by 223,000 in May, solidly beating an expected rise of 188,000. Gains in the labor market have accelerated recently, reducing fears of a pending slowdown, yet the increases remain modest by historical comparison, suggesting that the slower and somewhat steadier gains of the current cycle may help prolong the…
-
•
Smart Contracts Don’t Leave Humans Out of the Picture
Blockchain enthusiasts often focus on the potential for smart contracts to replace biased and fallible humans with cut-and-dry computer code. But this emphasis on code over humans can confuse both the definition and true potential of smart contacts.
-
•
What Cities Need to Accommodate the Delivery Economy
Polls have found that consumers in many countries have come to expect only a two-to-three-day wait for an order to arrive. Cities and states stand to gain if they get the rules that constrain warehouse development and street space right.
-
•
Car-Sharing App Shows Why Peer-to-Peer Is Unstoppable
Incumbents are so scared that they spent over $1.4 million in 2017 alone on lobbying for bills to restrict the operation of car-sharing startups or to impose the same laws and taxes applied to car-rental companies. However, Turo’s path to success shows that innovation in the industry was long overdue.
-
•
A Hilarious Comedy about Ghastly Evil
The film brilliantly shows the wild jockeying for power that follows Stalin’s death, with fantastic portrayals of all the important figures from this period: Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrently Beria, Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrey Andreyev, Georgy Zhukov. It also serves as an excellent guide to what actually happened in those strange months that led to Beria’s execution and…
-
•
The Threat to Bitcoin from Quantum Computing
This week, it was my pleasure to sit on a panel with Gavin Brennen of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a physicist and one of the world experts on this topic. He presented a very nice paper that examined this question in some detail. He began with his frustration over the headlines that swept the…