Economics
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August 9, 2016
Buy a House to Make a Home
Over almost 52 years of marriage, my wife and I have rented eight and purchased eight residences. So we have considerable experience with both renting…
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October 27, 2016
Cemetery Lots, Inflation, and Social Security
Digging through some records in my home town this week I learned that, in 1957, my parents bought four cemetery lots at Grandview Cemetery for…
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June 24, 2016
Designated Giving, Loss Leaders, and Planned Parenthood (Originally Posted 7/31/2015)
Originally published 7/31/2015 · republished 2016
Encouragement of designated giving can be an effective fundraising tool but, except in the case of major capital campaigns for specific projects, has little or…
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January 21, 2022
DJIA Trends
Below are a couple of charts, thanks to this website, that make a strong case for ignoring long term market trends while investing, constantly and…
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July 22, 2016
False Hopes and Student Loan Sharks (Updated from 6/5/2010 Post)
Originally published 6/5/2010 · republished 2016
USA Student Loan data are not as easy to pin down as our total National Debt (~$19.3T) or the amount we owe the Social Security…
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December 7, 2020
Financial Turning Point
I enjoy newsletter, Thoughts from the Frontline, by John Mauldin. For December 5th, he wrote about our widening wealth gap and the discontent of “elites”…
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July 18, 2016
Granddaddy Williams and the National Economy (9/16/2011)
Originally published 9/16/2011 · republished 2016
My paternal grandfather, Richard Hobart Williams, was a hard-working staunch conservative, a Hoover Republican who traveled around East Tennessee during the Great Depression trading horses…
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August 25, 2016
Hard Times (November 30, 2011)
Originally published November 30, 2011 · republished 2016
When I started reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I did a quick search on “Dust Bowl” for a little background information on the subject…
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June 17, 2016
Historical Perspective and Context for US GDP Growth
GDP, the total value of goods and services produced within the country in a given time interval and the key measure of national economic health,…
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January 29, 2022
I Never Bought a Macintosh
I remember seeing an Apple Macintosh computer on display somewhere in Columbia, SC, in 1984 or 1985 and being amazed at the point and click…
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October 23, 2016
Job Growth – New Low Predicted
Both sides of the political fence like to pick and choose data points to prove either that the jobs recovery during the Obama administration is…
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July 4, 2016
Labor Supply vs. Labor Demand (2/10/2014)
Originally published 2/10/2014 · republished 2016
Here is a key point to keep in mind: Labor supply and labor demand are separate and independent variables. When the demand exceeds the supply,…
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June 17, 2016
Math Matters…In Federal Financial Strategies
(Based on an 8/21/2011 post – Edited and data updated to 2015 in this post) August 21, 2011, I wrote a post making some fun…
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July 1, 2016
Millionaires and Billionaires and Wealth (3/10/2013)
Originally published 3/10/2013 · republished 2016
There is plenty of evidence that the rich are getting richer but not as much that the poor are getting poorer. The annual Forbes Magazine…
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June 16, 2016
National Debt a Moral Issue
Some folks like the idea of a smaller and less intrusive government, lots of dynamic and competitive private business activity, and individual citizens making choices…
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April 3, 2020
Now We Know Why!
Now we know why decades of deficit spending and debt accumulation, even through times of fake prosperity, storing our national wealth in ridiculously inflated stock…
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July 3, 2016
Reduced Deficits = Increased Debt
The simple truth expressed in the title equation is lost in the shuffle of the posturing under way in Washington DC, in particular President Obama’s…
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July 5, 2016
Trade Talk (7/7/2010; Updated 7/5/2016)
Originally published 7/7/2010 · republished 2016
I have a feeling that trade policy is going to be a major topic of discussion between now and November 2016. This is a reposting,…
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