External article · The Conversation Business
ECONOMICS
The collapse raises troubling questions about who benefits from financial modernization, who controls it and who bears the risks when it fails.
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External article · The Conversation Business
ECONOMICS
For many Americans, opposition to data centers was a factor in their votes.
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ECONOMICS
Over 120 screwworm cases have appeared in US animals in 2026, including in elk. Here’s how America’s 11.5 million hunters can help contain the spread.
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ECONOMICS
Amendment 3, which cuts property taxes for most homeowners, will also mean a 30% drop in tax revenue for Florida counties.
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ECONOMICS
The US economy is built on energy prices. When people’s bills are high, they tend to vote against incumbents and their parties.
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ECONOMICS
New research suggests that some ways that companies boast about their charitable giving are more effective at brand-building than others.
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ECONOMICS
But before you buy gifts long before you plan to give them away, be sure to read vendors’ fine print and get familiar with their return policies.
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ECONOMICS
Many standard measures of economic health are strong, but voters in both parties are increasingly pessimistic.
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ECONOMICS
Communities almost never see a boost in job or income growth after taxpayers subsidize a new sports facility.
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ECONOMICS
There’s not much diesel fuel lying around, and lots of people want to buy what is available, as well as what little is produced each day. It’s all a matter of supply and demand.
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ECONOMICS
Because Trump picked this fight due to his concerns about Brazilian politics, that country’s presidential elections might quell it soon.
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About Economics
Positive and normative claims
Economic argument mixes two kinds of statement that need separating. A positive claim describes how the world works: raise this tax and that behavior changes by roughly this much. A normative claim says what ought to happen, and rests on values about fairness, liberty or priority that no amount of data settles. Most public disagreements described as economic are really disputes about the second wearing the clothing of the first. Noticing which is in play clarifies almost every argument in this section, because two people can agree entirely on the mechanism and still disagree completely on the policy.
Schools of thought are real disagreements
Economics contains genuine and long-running disputes about how economies behave, particularly around how quickly markets clear, how much government spending stimulates activity, and how expectations shape outcomes. These are not merely political labels attached to identical analysis. A commentator's answer on whether an economy self-corrects quickly predicts much of what they will say about unemployment, deficits and interest rates. Knowing that a disagreement is theoretical rather than factual is useful, because it means new data will move the argument slowly rather than settling it.
Indicators, aggregates and what they hide
Headline economic numbers are aggregates, and an average conceals distribution. Output can grow while most households see nothing. Inflation is an average across a basket, so its effect differs sharply depending on how much of a budget goes to housing, food and energy. Unemployment counts people looking for work, so it can fall because people stopped looking. Most series are revised after publication. Treating any single indicator as the state of the economy is the fastest way to be confidently wrong about it.
Trade-offs, incidence and unintended effects
The most transferable habit in economic reasoning is asking who ultimately bears a cost, which is frequently not whoever writes the check. A tax levied on a business may be passed to customers in prices, to workers in wages, or absorbed by owners, depending on how readily each can go elsewhere. A price cap changes quantity as well as price. A subsidy for one thing raises demand for its complements. None of this makes an intervention wrong, but a policy argument that does not name a trade-off is almost always incomplete, because resources committed in one place are unavailable in another.