Coupons are a time tax on the less affluent that allows companies to price differentiate based on ability to pay — with plausible deniability as anyone can use a coupon.
Political Economy
Purest
Want to see pure evil? Well here you go:
Prod Allo
No, this is not correct. There is very much a tradeoff, definitionally. “Allocative efficiency” refers to producing goods and services that meet consumer demand, e.g. producing the colors of cars that people want to buy. It is future-oriented, generally. However, Pareto efficiency (rather, optimality) is where a person cannot be made better off without making someone else worse off. The two concepts are related (sometimes) but not the same thing at all. To expand that thought a bit, Pareto efficiency is about finding the correct balance between allocative and productive efficiency, not just concentrating on allocative efficiency alone1.
The person who wrote that is confused and should read their textbooks again, but more closely this time.
Considering
As recently as five years ago, this was widely said to be impossible. But it turned out to not even be that hard, considering. (This is per capita, but still very positive.)
Khanvincing
Billionaire Donors Have It Out for This Legal Prodigy, but President Harris Will Need Her.
If Harris wins and fires Khan, that will be a huge unforced error. I’m glad that seems to be off the table now. Obviously, it’s great that billionaires hate Lina; it means she is doing her job correctly. She’s the best thing that has happened to the FTC in ages.
I’m biased as I’m a Khan OG; I’ve been reading her papers and work since she was still in law school. And she’s a good example that wisdom has little do to do with age. She’s only 35 now, but became FTC chair when she was 32. And she was incredibly smart and wise already when I started reading her when she was 23.
Just shows how busted that whole discourse is, really (to veer completely off-topic).
Obfuscatory
The real cost of groceries is back to the start of Covid, and going down.
This is crazy cracksmoking crap. Does anyone believe this? My income did not double since the start of Covid, but grocery prices certainly have. I guess the econs figure if they flood the zone with propaganda and their preachy proselytism of absolute lies they can convince enough people. And I suppose that does work.
We elected George W. Bush and Barack Obama twice, after all.
Standard Fare
It’s funny that the GOP/MAGATs are calling Harris’s policy proposals far-left. Even for the US, they are mild center right and would’ve been Republican policies in the 1980s. In Western Europe, they’d be quite far to the right, but not quite far right.
She’s a standard-issue Democrat. Shocking.
Streets
Hush now, you’re not supposed to ask questions like that. If you do, the streets will flow with blood, the air will turn to water, and Congress will pass a law requiring pineapple on all pizzas.
NIMBY Blowback
From what I can tell, most of the hate directed toward Kamala Harris over “price controls1” is actually because she wants to streamline permitting and smack down NIMBYs, thus making housing easier to build.
The NIMBYs are doing all they can to fabricate whatever petty calumnies they can to make sure this doesn’t happen. For many, their entire politics is based on the price of their house and nothing else. That’s a lot of what we’re seeing now.
The Usual Con
We’ve never used DoorDash or anything like that and our grocery costs have roughly doubled1 since 2019. And we buy about the same things. Why do econs try so very hard to con us about this?
Recreational
‘Our city is not an RV park’: L.A. to study widespread RV parking ban.
It seems that cities will do nearly anything but attempt to address the housing affordability crisis that is the actual cause of this and similar follow-on problems; homelessness, RVs everywhere, poor economic growth in the most viable urban areas, low birth rates — all of this and more is caused by NIMBYs preventing construction, thus leading to absurdly-high shelter costs where the good jobs are.
We need to smack down the NIMBYs hard and build, build, build. The other problems will then be solved without much additional effort. But no one says that because NIMBYs have the power.
Kampaign
Kamala is a much better candidate than I thought she’d be, and actually has energy for campaigning and fundraising. This’ll be a good natural experiment to see how much that matters1, especially if the economy continues to hum along about the same as it is now.
I am glad that I was wrong about her capabilities and prospects.
Ven Diagram
The US didn’t become wealthy because of its good institutions, but it also did not become unwealthy because of its institutions. Which is how many states do it, such as Venezuela and much of the rest of Latin America. That’s also important and it is equally childish to believe otherwise.
Khan Mars
Mars, maker of M&M’s and Snickers, to buy Cheez-It owner Kellanova for nearly $30 billion.
I hope Lina Khan smacks this so hard these companies all end up on Mars. The last thing we need is more consolidation in our food system. And check this corporate gibberish.
“The Kellanova brands significantly expand our snacking platform, allowing us to even more effectively meet consumer needs and drive profitable business growth,” Andrew Clarke, global president of Mars Snacking, said in a statement.
“Snacking platform.” Ok, buddy. Anyone who says crap like that is no longer actually human. They have been replaced by marketroids. If those types didn’t control so much and wield so much power, this sort of thing would be funnier that it in fact is.
Mid Mid
Even though we can easily afford it, it’s still shocking how much a simple dinner for two is out at a mid-range restaurant. It’s more than 2x as much as it was before the pandemic.
The inflation numbers are convenient lies.