Magnificentme's blog

Most people who defend a rise in federal minimum wage bemoan the current wage as to low for a person to realistically be able to live on. I agree; living on 5.15 per hour is not possible in most parts of the country. Some people may spend their first hour worth of wages on gas to get too and from work. However, a very small percentage of the US population actually works for minimum wage, and those that do are usually students.  Read More »

I live in Texas. Around here we are generally big on nationalism, protecting the American way, and restricting immigration. We don’t tend to deal well with unions, and some amount of concern over outsourcing is mitigated by the lack of company towns and dependence on manufacturing.

That said I can’t help but cringe when people complain about outsourcing, off shoring, and globalization. Somehow competition has become evil, a strong dollar has become foul, and “free trade” has become the enemy.  Read More »

On Thursday November 16th one of the great minds of our society passed away.

Milton Friedman was 94 when he passed on, and he is among the rock-stars of economics. It is true that Friedman could only be considered famous in the smaller circles of the educated, but his accomplishments are incredible. Milton Friedman is the free market economist who founded the modern monetarist form of economic thought, a form that contradicts the traditional Keynesian theory by stating that calculated changes in the money supply can stabilize the economy is a way that changes in government spending cannot. The monetarist economic theory states that the government should restrict itself to controlling inflation by manipulating the money supply, and should stay out of the economic realm to allow markets to work the way that they work best. Freely.  Read More »

If anyone is interested in reading more about economics from a real economist please visit http://www.gregmankiw.blogspot.com/

Greg Mankiw is an economics professor at Harvard, and he wrote THE book that you use in all upper level macro classes. While his book is a text book, and is thus just as dry and boring as most other books, it does a very good job of explaining economic concepts. If you are an Econ major who has used his book before, I especially recommend that you go take a look at his blog.  Read More »

For the last several years the global economy has been driven by American’s insatiable want, and China’s increasing willingness to supply. The US’s current account deficit is huge, in 2005 we had the largest negative balance $ -829,100,000,000. China and Japan had the largest positive balances, but it still takes the surpluses from at least eleven countries to finance the US’s deficit.  Read More »

Microfinance

Banks are companies that are ultimately out of make a profit. People lend the bank money, in the form of savings accounts and bonds, in return for a payment for the loan... Interest. Banks will then turn around and lend your money to someone else for a small fee (interest), and when they are paid back they will give you your money and have a nice little profit.  Read More »

Secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has resigned. Many people speculate that it is because the unpopular war lost the Republican Party both the House and the Senate. I don’t know what the truth of the matter is, but I’m excited by the man that has been nominated to replace Rumsfeld.

Robert Gates spent twenty-six years working for the Central Intelligence Agency. He was eventually promoted to the position of director or central intelligence by George Bush (Sr.). When he left the CIA Gates became president of Texas A&M University.  Read More »

I was reading the comments on minimum wage from wjames89 ‘s post “Minimum wage needs to be Increased” and I thought it was interesting that many of the states that people say have a minimum wage that is above the federal wage are unionized.

Unions always support an increase in the minimum wage; it makes them look like they support the poor and that creates support for labor unions. Plus, unions are organized so that they can be politically influential.  Read More »