Category Archives: economics
COVID-19 Six Months In
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd September 2020It’s just about half a year since we recognized that the coronavirus had taken residence in the US and just about everywhere else. We took a while to realize that the bug was going to stay longer than The Man Who Came to Dinner. Though epidemics have been a feature of human existence ever since…
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Einstein, Insanity, and Models
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th July 2020“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This quotation attributed to Einstein, was said by him (if he really said it) in the context of quantum mechanics, where doing the same experiment repeatedly does give different results. But in the macro world the same experiment properly performed does give…
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Corona Craziness – Why We Surrendered Without a Fight
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th April 2020Genghis Khan was the greatest administrator who ever lived. He always knew when to temper justice with brutality. Anonymous How did we reach a social point where most of the world would accept suicide as a remedy for a serious, but not unmanageable, contagious disease? We’ve endured plagues, famines, natural disasters, wars, and a Pandora’s…
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Coronavirus – From Panic to Reality
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th April 2020It is slowly dawning on the world and the US in particular that we are suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. We’re on life support. Our economic survival is 50-50, probably worse. How did we get here and where is here? I’ll start with the newest information which should come as no…
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Why Walmart is Doomed
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th April 2020The title is hyperbole. I don’t think Walmart will go out of business, rather it will fall victim to what the great economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. In the mid 20th century General Motors was the exemplar of American industrial excellence. In the first decade of the next century it went bankrupt and was…
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Back to Work by March 30: A Coronavirus Imperative
Written by Robert Luddy | 24th March 2020America has no choice if it is to avoid total disaster. China and Russia are open for business and working at close to capacity, as America shutters most all business and industry in states such as Pennsylvania, New York, California, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In many cases only select manufacturing companies are allowed to operate,…
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Government Is No Match for the Coronavirus
Written by Robert Luddy | 21st March 2020The coronavirus is reminding everyone that you cannot rely on government and that ultimately it is the private sector that will provide the solutions. Many nonmedical government officials and members of the media are predicting massive cases of COVID-19 and death, when in fact no one can predict the outcome. What we do know is…
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Rights, Entitlements, and the Cost of Medical Care
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th April 2019The post previous to this one presented two links. The first was to an article that detailed the upcoming financial failure of Medicare. The second was to an article that outlined Senator Bernie Sanders plan to provide Medicare for all. The unstated implication was that if we couldn’t pay for the Medicare we have putting…
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Dumber Than a Broom Handle
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th February 2019A state similar to the instrument in the title is often the condition of prominent people who offer pronouncements about issues not related to their expertise. Typically, these proclamations concern politics, economics, and/or science and technology. Athletes and actors are obviously entitled to their opinions. Because they are prominent, their opinions get disseminated and commented…
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Not in Our Stars
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th August 2018…history;which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. Edward Gibbon In a vein similar to Gibbon, Mark Twain allowed that the worst that could be said about anyone was that he was human. Prior to Twain, but after Gibbon, James Madison declared that no laws would be…
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