ECON 2020 Extra Credit

For April 1 (rescheduled from March 27) In a red state like Utah, it can be hard to convince macroeconomics students of facts about Democrats. One point I try to stress is that all elected officials like to spend money on their pet government "programs". Perhaps Republicans are a little less inclined to do this. Both parties try pretty hard to sell the ideas that Democrats always want to spend more and Republicans always want to cut spending. There isn't much evidence to support this. The same thing happens with taxes. All elected officials like to cut taxes because they think this will help them get your vote. Perhaps Democrats are a little less inclined to do this. Both parties try pretty hard to sell the idea that Republicans always want to cut taxes and Democrats always want to raise them. Again, the evidence is pretty weak on this. The reality is that both parties have bought in hard to the Keynesian idea that increasing government spending and cutting taxes will imp

For March 18 I announced in class that I would skip this one because I couldn't get the article link I wanted to use to open properly. I'll see if I can get it ready for Friday. So that make this one the last one that will appear on Test 3. For March 15 A month ago we looked at the big 4 recession indicators. I was worried because we had 2 reds in January, and I said we should keep on eye on the other two. Well, now it looks like this : Those 2 missing ones for January both came in as green. Plus another green one for February. So it's kind of more of the same: some troubling data, but most of it ... isn't. That's been the story for almost 2 years now. For March 13 Yesterday, the BLS announced the CPI and its inflation rate for February. The number came in right around expectations: an increase of 0.4% in prices in February, and an increase of 3.2% over the past year. Here's the press release . On the surface, those seem like pretty small numbers.  BUT, if you