David Goodhart responds to Jonathan Portes and it’s as bad as you might expect. To focus, remember he said 50% of schoolchildren in Bradford have special educational needs? Here’s the tape: Bradford has just opened two more schools for children with Special Educational Needs,’ he writes. ‘On some measures nearly half of all children in…
Read More The Bradford mutants strike back.Cracking set from Jamie xx. At the XOYO 1st birthday, I remember him playing the Prodigy’s No Good/Start The Dance, which doesn’t feature here but plenty of other good things do. This isn’t quite as weird as the Saharan Cellphone thing from a while back but it’s interesting: As good as ever. Lovebox 2013 –…
Read More InterestingEconomy seats: sucky, but many still come with a view. http://t.co/YFfjWjbAm4 — Charlie Whitaker (@charlie__) June 23, 2013 He’s referring to Peter Day of BBC News’s piece here. But the best bit is this bit: Immediately, zonk! Back comes the seat as the person in front assumes relax mode as a default position. The mean…
Read More The awkward stretching movementThis is the most horrid idea i've read in a long time: Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant http://t.co/R5Ffncye2G — Andrew Smith (@andrew_graeme) June 23, 2013 I was about to reply saying that it was OK by me as long as all landlords receiving housing benefit payments, all pensioners, and all farmers…
Read More Colour links for the last postIt looks like people want to discuss “fiscal rules” again. seems in @hopisen & @anthonypainter 's view Labour can only earn fiscal credibility by putting someone else in charge http://t.co/0zjXz3kH9M — Declan Gaffney (@djmgaffneyw4) June 23, 2013 The first problem here is the obvious one. As in this post, the period when the “fiscal rules”…
Read More Avoiding the Last Social Democrat. The last thing we need are new fiscal rulesChris Dillow loves the idea that there is nothing in industrialised economies worth investing in, and there hasn’t been for years. As far as I can see, the evidence for this is a quote from Ben Bernanke in 2005 that might have been included in his speech by heaven knows what PR flack. But I…
Read More Demand determines income. It does so through investmentSo, did ya ever want to know social network analysis metrics on the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport’s special advisers during the spring of 2011, as Rupert Murdoch’s interests in the UK feverishly lobbied Jeremy Hunt and his staff and we raced towards the epochal eruption of Hackgate? ‘Course you did. In June, 2011,…
Read More Hunt, through a non-sexist prismVia Simon Wren-Lewis‘s blog. You see the flattish bit from 2002 to 2008? When people like Hopi Sen talk about “spending out of control”, that’s the bit they mean. This is some weird use of the word “control”, huh? In fact, the only period on the chart where the budget wasn’t either busting or booming…
Read More Look after unemployment and…Econospeak has been having a debate about whether aggregate supply/aggregate demand models are actually any use in economics, which is important because pretty much everyone who does a macroeconomics class gets taught them, like me. One of the things I remember being dissatisfied with was how to reconcile the long-run aggregate supply curve with the…
Read More Green FriedmanUnlearning Economics touches on Daniel Kahneman’s System One/System Two distinction. I think it’s worth repeating something that struck me about Thinking, Fast and Slow here. Kahneman specifically refuses to make a value judgment between the two, and repeatedly stresses that people trust to intuition for the very good reason that intuition is very often right.…
Read More quick Kahneman