Infinity Is Your Friend In Economics. Continuing our ongoing series looking at economics when scarcity is removed from markets, I wanted to go back to the early discussion on the importance of understanding zero in making sense of markets where scarcity is removed. That post discussed how many who believe economics requires scarcity do so because they believe economic equations break down when a zero is put into them. That is, they see a zero in the "marginal cost = price" statement and they say that the system must be broken, because you can't have a market when the price is zero. However, that's wrong. Zero works just fine, but you have to understand why. The key actually isn't in zero, but zero's flip side: infinity. Just like many early societies had tremendous difficulty in coming to understand the concept of zero, the concept of infinity was incredibly difficult to grasp.
However, the mistake here is to look at the market in a manner that is way too simplified. The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free. Ok. I'll be the first to admit that I've taken the long way around in going through my series of posts exploring the economics of goods when scarcity is removed. What I had thought would be a series of 5 or 6 posts, turned into something much longer -- but each week people came up with new questions or discussions or objections, and so I tried to spend some time digging down on various pieces of the economics at hand. However, what I haven't done is tie it all together in one single spot. In the last couple of weeks there's been tremendous confusion among people from Scott Adams to CNN to various others that have made it abundantly clear that the one thing I've failed to do is put the whole concept together in a single place. That's resulted in people being confused about what I'm actually saying -- where they only pick up a tiny piece of the argument or confuse it with the arguments made by others.
If done correctly, you can increase your market-size greatly. So there you have it. Cord Cutters And The Death Of TV. Mike Nudelman / BI The TV business is having its worst year ever. Audience ratings have collapsed: Aside from a brief respite during the Olympics, there has been only negative ratings growth on broadcast and cable TV since September 2011, according to Citi Research. Media stock analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson recently noted, "The pay-TV industry has reported its worst 12-month stretch ever. " All the major TV providers lost a collective 113,000 subscribers in Q3 2013. That doesn't sound like a huge deal — but it includes internet subscribers, too. Broadband internet was supposed to benefit from the end of cable TV, but it hasn't. In all, about 5 million people ended their cable and broadband subs between the beginning of 2010 and the end of this year. People are unplugging.
Time Warner Cable, for instance, lost 306,000 TV subscribers in Q3, and 24,000 broadband web subscribers, too. Cable TV ratings are sinking. Cable TV ratings are in an historic slump. Citi Research ISI Group. Fewer people sit below the poverty line now than ever before. Why are we not talking about it? It’s been almost a month since Statistics Canada released its latest report on poverty in Canada (“Income of Canadians,” June 27). Since then I’ve been watching to see whether somebody, anybody would write about it.
You would think somebody would. It is a well-established principle of social justice that a society should make its first priority improving the lot of the worst off among it, and is to be judged by how well it does in this regard. What is more, the news on this front is remarkable, even extraordinary. In 2011, the latest year for which StatsCan has figures, the proportion of the population living on low income — that is, with incomes below the agency’s Low Income Cut-off (LICO) — fell to its lowest level … well, ever. At just 8.8%, it beat the previous record of 9.0%, set in 2010. Certainly if the trend were in the other direction, we’d be reading about nothing but. So it’s worth noting that LICO is no longer quite such a moving target.
National Post. The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure - U.S Census Bureau. Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer.
Daily Treasury Yield Curve Rates. These data are also available in XML format by clicking on the XML icon. The schema for the XML is available in XSD format by clicking on the XSD icon. Monday Apr 14, 2014 * 30-year Treasury constant maturity series was discontinued on February 18, 2002 and reintroduced on February 9, 2006. From February 18, 2002 to February 8, 2006, Treasury published alternatives to a 30-year rate. See Long-Term Average Rate for more information. Treasury discontinued the 20-year constant maturity series at the end of calendar year 1986 and reinstated that series on October 1, 1993. Treasury Yield Curve Rates.
Treasury Yield Curve Methodology. Negative Yields and Nominal Constant Maturity Treasury Series Rates (CMTs). As such, Treasury will restrict the use of negative input yields for securities used in deriving interest rates for the Treasury nominal Constant Maturity Treasury series (CMTs). Daily Treasury Yield Curve Rates.
How Republicans Blocked a Key Obamacare Benefit—Without the Shutdown. With all eyes on congressional Republicans' doomed effort to repeal Obamacare, it's easy to forget that efforts to stymie the law's key provisions are continuing apace at the state level. Specifically, 22 states have decided not to go along with the Affordable Care Act's provisions for expanding Medicaid coverage to their poorest residents. Medicaid expansion will kick in January 1. So far, its uneven rollout is disproportionately affecting minorities, a higher percentage of whom qualify for the federally funded coverage. As the authors of a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation explain, "People of color make up the majority of uninsured individuals with incomes below the Medicaid expansion limit in both states moving forward and not moving forward with the expansion at this time.
" (The 2012 Supreme Court decision that spared Obamacare turned Medicaid expansion into a state-by-state decision.) Fourteen Things That Will Remain Scarce (and Drive Future Job Growth?) Let’s imagine that current trends continue, and technology continues to drive down the price of various goods. We could eventually end up with a world in which artificial intelligence equals human beings in most tasks, household devices can manufacture physical goods with atomic precision, transportation is fully automated, solar energy is plentiful, and high volumes of useful data freely flow from person to person. It might take a while to reach this point, but that doesn’t mean such an outcome isn’t worth thinking about.
Articulating our eventual destination is important since there are likely to be economic effects of getting closer to such a destination long before we actually get there. In such a scenario, what are the goods that remain scarce and might therefore continue to drive a human-based economy? I have attempted to assemble a list. I’m sure my list is not complete. . (1) Attention — Attention is irreducibly scarce. Economicon shows how tax havens, bankers' bonuses and inequality arise using a pile of poker chips. Economicon is being developed by the Equality TrustIn a year 12 class, one group ends up modelling an economy that resembles that of corrupt African government... while another ends up simulating Sweden By Rachel Rickard Straus Published: 08:38 GMT, 29 June 2013 | Updated: 09:19 GMT, 2 July 2013 ‘He’s too rich, let’s all get him,’ shouts 17-year old Alex to his five classmates, pointing at his friend Elliot who is sheepishly trying to shrink away from the attention and hide his new-found wealth.
‘Fat cat alert!’ Shouts another boy as the group catch on to the large pile of poker chips in front of Elliot. I am sitting in on a year 12 economics lesson in which, through a simple game using just poker chips, a group of 17 year-olds have unwittingly simulated the problems of bankers’ bonuses. Year 12 pupils do their best to hide their poker chip wealth in fear their opponents will steal it from them in the next round ‘We’ve just built Sweden,’ one student observes.
Report for Selected Countries and Subjects. Old media’s problems are the costs not the lack of paywalls. By Sarah Lacy On November 26, 2012 GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram is one of my favorite bloggers (who doesn’t work at PandoDaily), so I’m delighted that this time, I actually agree with him on something. Go read his post on why paywalls are not the answer to dying newspapers right now. Because he’s completely 1,000 percent right. Ingram takes on the Columbia Journalism Review for calling the Washington Post total Luddites for not erecting a paywall. The article is so flawed and reactionary to digital realities, it’s a breathtaking view of how the old media world still thinks. Like when you go to New York and see that people still wear ties to work everyday. A few points, in addition to the ones Ingram raises: Chairman Don Graham is not a Luddite, and he’s not stupid. Newspapers have three options: The first is to try to compete on raw page views with the most giant media corporations in the world.
Like Ingram, I applaud the Post for refusing to take the short-term way out. Why pushing for a paywall at the Washington Post completely misses the point. WaPo must transform to survive. The New York Times: Running faster and faster to stay in the same place. CANSIM - 281-0027 - Average weekly earnings (SEPH), by type of employee for selected industries classified using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
Employment, Earnings and Hours - 72-002-x2012010-eng.pdf. Inside the global offshore money maze. A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over. The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.
The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Post-Crisis Adventures in Financial Subversion: The Block-Chain of infinite mystery: What the hell is Bitcoin? I’ll bet all the Bitcoins I have though, that very few people actually understand what the hell Bitcoin is. I myself do not understand it. Try listen to this guy explain it, and feel your mind frazzle. More than anything, I have the sense that Bitcoin is a cult. A strange cybernetic cult. An anarchic techno-pirate, quasi-mystical collective on a dystopian mission to subvert the global monetary system.
I guess that’s why it attracts me, but I’d still like to know exactly how it works. The Blockchain One thing I do know is that the Bitcoin network worships something called the BlockChain. 1) "It's almost like a section of the blockchain has my signature on it, and then I sign it with your name, and then the whole network agrees that we've done a transaction" 2) "The blockchain is on everyone's computer. I'm not sure if I've quoted him correctly, but I mostly sat at the table and stared at him with a strong feeling of bewilderment. Is Bitcoin the BORG? @Webisteme looks at me from the table.