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To seek the causes of poverty... is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. The great cold of poverty and economic stagnation is merely the absence of economic development. It can be overcome only if the relevant economic processes are in motion.
—Jane Jacobs
Until yesterday, I ranked the ending of The Shawshank Redemption as the best ever. Now that one's in second place.
I'm no movie critic; that's why I hardly ever talk about them here. But this one, The Lives of Others, now ranks at the top with me. My son told me not to miss it, and he was right.
All I'll say about the plot is this: it takes place in communist East Germany in the mid-1980s, and it's a movie about character. For the first half of the movie, I was wondering where it was going. Then... what a finish.
Here's the link. Rent it or buy it; just don't miss it.
Simple rules build complex structures, and complex structures deconstruct into simple rules.
--Benoit Mandelbrot
I transferred this site to a different domain name server, and it was down for a day as a result. By the way, now you have to put a "www" in front of "optimist123.com" to get here. I'm trying to fix that; we'll see.
No balanced budget in sight yet, but the deficit (1.5% GDP) is low enough to keep the debt ratio essentially in balance (debt ratio = debt/GDP).
Nothing from any of the candidates about that, of course, because during an election year, dollars of debt accumulated by the "bad guys" is always the headliner. Nothing about our ability to service debt, nothing about the size of the economy, nothing about debt incurred by the government being the same thing as credit extended by the lenders—just dollars of debt. Single-entry accounting, in other words. It's financial nonsense, but the scare factor nonetheless makes it a political goldmine.
I suppose it's time for some election-conscious journalist to calculate which planet all those debt dollars would stretch to if they were laid end-to-end. Probably Jupiter or so. (Good thing our GDP would stretch way beyond that—to Saturn or so—isn't it?)
In any case, the burden of the debt is still one-third lower than it was in the mid-1990s (burden = percentage of tax receipts it takes to pay the interest). Below are the charts; click to enlarge.
From before Copernicus to the present, change in the way we see the world has never occurred by getting the people in charge to say, "Gee, sorry—I guess we've been wrong all our lives." Change is accomplished by the non-professionals, the young, the people who are not as professionally committed to maintaining the status quo as the "experts" are.
—Dr. Rick Boettger, The Deficit Lie
As of March, the number of private nonfarm jobs in the economy is just barely greater than year ago. Unemployment is up to 5.1% (vs. 4.4% year ago). Not encouraging.
Here are the latest charts; click to enlarge. (Keep in mind I'm no longer going to calculate the average wage rate of jobs lost vs jobs gained.) The construction jobs situation is more evidence that we need the housing sector to turn around before things will get much better.
Two minor bright spots: average wage increases beat PCE inflation, and the labor force participation rate is up a notch -- for what it's worth.
Americans celebrated the end of the Cold War with a mixture of relief and satisfaction. The people of the United States hoped to enjoy a peace dividend, as U.S. spending on national security was cut following the end of the Soviet military threat.
—The 9/11 Commission Report
For whatever it's worth: I don't wear ties much anymore, plus I've added a few more wrinkles in the last seven years -- so it was time to update the photo.
