One of the challenges in looking at income and wealth data is getting a sense of how different demographic groups are affected.

It’s relatively easy to find median income and wealth data over time for the entire population, for example. But then problems of interpretation immediately present themselves. For example, if the data is household data, what are we to make of things if the household compositions has changed over time?

Last September a very informative paper was published by the neoconservative Atlantic Council. In connection with this institution are such important public figures as Collin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Henry Kissinger. The paper, written by John T. Watts, summarizes the main conclusions drawn at this year’s Sovereign Challenges Conference in Washington, DC. The text allows for a deep look into some of the minds of the American elite and their allies.

There is severe confusion about the meaning of economic growth.  Many seem to mistakenly think that it has to do with GDP or producing stuff. It does not. Economic growth means that an economy’s ability to satisfy people’s wants, whatever they are--that is, to produce wellbeing -- increases.

GDP is a rather terrible way of capturing this using [public] statistics, and is thus corrupted by those benefiting from corrupting such figures. GDP is not growth. 

Historian Ralph Raico was one of the great popularizers and scholars of European decentralism. That is, Raico recognized and supported the idea that Europe’s traditions in favor of human rights and limited political power grew out of Europe’s long history of decentralized and fragmentary politics. Many historians over the centuries, such as Lord Acton, have noted how Europe — not including Russia and its frontiers — differed from other civilizations of the time in its lack of any single, centralized political power.

Jeff Peshut answers the question that has been widely discussed in the media lately: Is There Really A Corporate Debt Bubble That’s Ready To Burst? 

The European Central Bank (ECB) is rumored to be planning a halt  to its four-year quantitative easing program at the end of this week when it will stop its asset purchases while continuing to keep interest rates at current near-zero levels through 2019. The Economist laments this ‘rash’ decision, arguing that the European economy is still ‘faltering’, showing only very feeble and unstable signs of growth.

Listen to Ryan McMaken’s commentary on the Radio Rothbard podcast.

Bloomberg reports this week that on Wall Street, men have started to implement office strategies that some managers and employees believe will minimize the likeliness of being accused of sexual harassment:

Austrian economists should take an interest in the so-called “replication crisis” in science, which is affecting primarily the field of psychology, but is likely under-recognized in other social sciences—and in economics in particular.