Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The economy and presidential politics according to Dilbert.

Well, not exactly. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, polled AEA economists.

The CNN report.
Adams posts about it on his blog. 1, 2.

The gist? Economists favor Obama on the majority of issues. Also, economists tend to be Democrats, though Independent economists also favor Obama.

I'm not surprised Education is the top issue for economists (I'm sure, that most AEA economists work in academia is a factor), but I am surprised that number two is Health Care. Do we have a lot of geriatric economists? I would have thought international trade, energy, and innovation would be bigger issues for economists.

Still, interesting stuff.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Houston: We're so great.

According to the Department of Labor, Houston has seen the second strongest job growth in the past 12 months. That's really good!

And, if you weren't impressed by that, there's a new book out to tell people why Houston's great. I wonder how widely it'll be distributed.

There are apparently projects to make the city more green, too, at affordable prices. Interesting!

In other news, ConocoPhillips is getting out of retail gas.

Economics is all about how everything is linked to everything else. If you cut taxes for the poor, they can more easily afford education, meaning a more educated populous, meaning a higher skilled workforce, and thusly higher GDP (just as an example). Hurricane Gustav may have hurt parts of Louisiana, but it's also affected the shrimping industry.