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Yearly Archives: 2015

A Connected Approach

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One of the recurring themes of Barataria is that nearly everything in our life can be evaluated based on how it is connected.  This works for analyzing political and economic power, but it also charts the course of ideas and products.  If our political system isn’t working properly, Barataria would argue that it isn’t connected properly to the society it purports to govern or to new ideas that will help it to change.

I’ve expounded on the subject in many different ways, sometimes without using the same words, as a way of thinking this out in public.  Many of you have responded with insightful comments and a few questions on the side – what is that guy going on about?  I’d like to nail this down into a simple, direct statement.  This is an old work, about five years old, but it is something I want to revist to help make sense of our changing world.

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GDP Down? Take It With a Little Seasoning

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The first revision for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first quarter (1Q15) came out negative. The economy is contracting! Is it time to panic?  The White House attributed the slowdown to weak exports, which are quite well known to be a problem.  But is that all?

As we have commented on at length before, the GDP numbers are full of fudge, so it may be hard to know just what to make of them. A cynic would say, and probably does say, that they the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is making the numbers up as they go to make everyone happy.

Perhaps you are a bit too diabetic to handle all the fudge, either, but this problem is a bit more savory than sweet. It’s all about the seasoning – or, rather, the “seasonal adjustment”.

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Catching Up on Old Stories

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It’s the end of the month, and the end of a holiday week. What better time to catch up on a few old stories with new updates?

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What is Software Worth?

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When is the value of something not its true value? When you’re adding up Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of course. That may sound ridiculous, given that the rise and occasional fall of GDP is the yardstick by which we measure how we’re doin’ as an economy. Isn’t it just the sum total of all the goods and services that we produce?

The short answer is “no”, but the long answer is “yes”. It depends a lot on what you mean by “goods” or “service” or “produce”. If that sounds like a huge amount of fudge for something so important, you may want to just enjoy the chocolate induced coma for a bit. Because some goods, like computers and software, have been falling in price but increasing in potential and quality dramatically for a while. Hardware is “hedonically adjusted” to take care of this, but software isn’t. And that difference might be extremely important.

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Ireland Stands for Equality

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A storm had been brewing in the North Atlantic, but as of this weekend the clouds had passed over the Irish Sea. As is common with the nasty storms that come from the roiling sea, the landscape was left forever changed – softened, gentler, and deeply appreciative of the all too rare sun.

The storm that passed over Ireland was the debate on whether to enshrine Marriage Equity in the Constitution, a document that has weathered similar storms in the scant 78 years since it was adopted. This time, however, Ireland was changing not just to catch up with the times but to lead them. It’s worth discussing on both sides of the stormy Atlantic and around the world.

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