With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

Economics

The Cold War Origins of Suburban Sprawl

Following up on yesterday’s post about the numbering of the Interstate Highway system, friend of the blog Isegoria turns up more pieces of evidence of my contention that suburban sprawl, mortgages, and zoning were all driven by Cold War policy. That isn’t the sole reason of course, but

I have a beautiful dream follow up

In May of 2018 I wrote an article for Ordinary Times, I Have a Beautiful Dream. I speculated about the redevelopment of an unused city block with a kind of gentle density. I wrote a short sequel on my own blog, I have a beautiful dream, but what really happens?

The Long View 2008-12-08: Remind me: why do we have economies?

The following paragraph surely counts as one of John’s good predictions: It is difficult for people in the early 21st century to understand that the only possible future of conservatism (in the sense of a political philosophy interested in conserving things) looks more than a little like the New

The Long View 2008-11-22: Debt and the End of the Age

John J. Reilly links here to an excellent article in The New Republic, “Debt Man Walking”. Even though the 2008 Housing Bubble has passed, we still live in the financial world that TNR article describes. If you want to understand the slightly insane sounding but remarkably stable practice known as

The Long View 2008-11-09: Zero Point History

I especially like this description of MMT in Federal finance as “quantum finance”. I have heard Republicans console themselves with the thought that the new Administration will not be able to carry out any very ambitious domestic projects, because it will operate under fiscal restraints. This is pre-quantum-finance thinking. There

John J. Reilly on Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace

John J. Reilly’s review of Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace [Amazon link] contains a remarkable digression on the economics of abundance. John wrote it twenty two years ago, and if anything it only gets better with age. Read it for yourself. Then there is the economics of abundance. In

Linkfest 2020-12-11: Eggnog, Risk Tolerance, and Hinges

The HobbitHouse Ilustrated Glossary of Woodworking terms Good Thomist that I am, I find a clear set of terms marvelous for clear thinking Dietrich Vollrath: When did productivity growth slow down? Total factor productivity, and the lack of growth thereof, is a common theme on With Both Hands. “O Magnum