Web Excursions 2021-12-19
Wonking Out: What Would a Hard Landing Look Like?
Although we talk a lot about inflation in the 1970s, the real pain came in the 1980s, as Paul Volcker’s Fed tried to bring inflation down.
It succeeded, but at an enormous price.
Getting core inflation down to around 4 percent from around 10 percent involved a huge surge in unemployment that took a long time to reverse
for now the working hypothesis for most economists is still that it took a nasty, sustained slump to end the inflation of the 1970s.
Are we looking at something similar in our future? Probably not, for several reasons.
despite high headline numbers lately, underlying inflation by the end of 2022 isn’t likely to be anywhere near 1980 levels
possibly more robust measures like the Atlanta Fed’s “sticky price” inflation or the Dallas Fed’s “trimmed mean” suggest that a Powell disinflation, if it has to happen, would start from 3 percent or 4 percent, not Volcker’s 10 percent.
Even if we assume that we will have to get inflation down to 2 percent from, say, 3 or 4 percent, that’s only a third or a quarter of the 1980s adjustment.
A number of economists have suggested that the current inflation looks more like 1946-48 than like the 1970s.
one rough-and-ready way to get something like core inflation for the 1940s is to look at service prices, which were much less volatile than goods prices
If we count the “point-years” of excess unemployment — one year of one percentage point elevated unemployment counts as a point-year —
the Volcker disinflation cost 14 such point-years, the ’40s disinflation only a third as much.
Why the difference [between the inflations of th 1940s and 1980s]?
By 1980 America had experienced many years of high inflation, so it was hard to persuade people that the inflation era was over.
That wasn’t true in the 1940s, when some prominent businessmen were still betting on the return of the Great Depression
Related: 低失业率带来通胀威胁，颠覆美联储以往经验
职位空缺数与失业人数之比达到了创纪录的水平，工资也在迅速上涨，尤其是最低收入工人的工资。
紧俏的劳动力市场是鲍威尔对通胀前景的看法从乐观转向担忧加重的关键原因之一，最终导致美联储周三决定更快“缩减”购债。
美联储官员暗示，预计明年将加息三次。
九个月前，他们预期最早要到 2024 年才会加息。
可以肯定的是，11 月份通胀率触及 39 年高位 6.8% 的原因并不是薪资，当月数据主要反映了住房、汽车和其他耐用品的需求远超供应。
但薪资将决定目前的通胀是暂时性还是持续性的。
大多数消费类产品的主要成本投入是劳动力，特别是服务类产品。
促使鲍威尔转变立场的一个关键因素是一份报告，该报告称，第三季度时薪成本折合年率飙升约 6%。只有当工人生产率每年增长 4%、达到历史水平的两倍左右时，这种劳动力成本的增长速度才与美联储 2% 的通胀目标相匹配。
但在截至 9 月份一年，生产率实际上是下降的。
美联储去年修改了货币政策框架，因为失业率和通胀之间的反向关系、即所谓的菲利浦斯曲线(Phillips curve)几乎消失。
因此，美联储假设，在通胀率攀升至 2% 以上之前，失业率也许会持续数年低于 4%。那么菲利浦斯曲线又出现了吗？
现在还不好说。目前的薪资和物价上涨压力不仅来自于需求过剩，更多的则来自于供给过少。
劳动力的供应减少受到多种因素的共同影响：慷慨的失业保险（现已到期），充足的财富，提前退休、以及对新冠疫情的恐惧——这种恐惧或因奥密克戎变异毒株的出现而重燃。
Is internet addiction eradicating the habit of reading?
I can’t deny that for someone like me, a marginalized North African kid whose first interaction with any part of the internet dates back to circa 2005,
the internet was the only way I could’ve accessed the body of knowledge that could fulfill my curiosity, and my eternal search for a way out of the “shithole”.
Without the internet, I would have been a very different man.
Without it, I would have succumbed to all the currents of local nationalism, religious fanaticism, and the currents of elite leftists running the “shithole” and confining everyone with them in eternal misery.
The way I see it now, is that the excess of these “informational floods” will only make the top one percent shrink in numbers, and grow in assets owned.
For those in the Bottom Billion, most people won’t use the internet to climb the socioeconomic ladder;
the amount of stories and “TikTok influencers” occupying their time and attentions won’t leave them a moment for that.
That’s the paradox: the internet is here thanks to governments.
Its structure resembles a democracy—to some extent.
Yet it is often threatened by governments (under totalitarian regimes),
and indirectly leads to more inequality (as those who will reap its benefits are few individuals and corporations).
Instead of the slow and deep thinker that reading requires,
the constant use of the Internet could turn one into a quick responder,
an attendant who receives information and instantly demands more.
Reading requires a genuine interest, a commitment of energy and cognitive capacity into the text at hand.
When reading, one stops at the middle of a paragraph that has struck him, and think it through twice.
The reader might even argue with the author, or even laugh at him and his superficiality.
In short, voracious readers ultimately become critical thinkers.
The Spanish essayist Miguel de Unamuno is attributed this quote: “Fascism is cured by reading, racism is cured by traveling.”